Stealing bandwidth is what it’s called when you pull an image directly from another website’s server. Even if you are allowed to use the image itself — and aren’t infringing on the owner’s copyright — you are still stealing bandwidth from the person whose server it’s on.

For instance, my dad recently found that someone was using an image from his website on their site. They were pulling it directly from his server, which means that every time someone loaded their page, they were using up a little bit of his traffic.

Because with FTP hosting, you pay for a certain amount of bandwidth every month, when someone takes an image from your server like that, they are basically using up some of your allotted traffic. If a really popular site does that, they could actually crash your server. For a business FTP site, your business depends on your website, so this could be really bad news for you…

…As well as anyone YOU do it TO.

By pulling in an image from someone else’s server, you could be causing them major problems by making them go over their traffic quota and either crashing their server or making them pay extra for more bandwidth. So be good, play nicely online, and don’t steal bandwidth!

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