Is Someone Stealing Your Source Code?

**admin** · 09-25-2004, 08:29 AM

That's a question that worries many people on the Internet.
And some people go to great lengths to hide their source
code.

There are several reasons you might want to conceal the
source code of your web pages:

=> if you have web pages that rank highly in the search
engines, you don't want people to see your meta tags

=> you don't want people copying your web page design
or java scripts

=> you want to protect your website from email harvesters
and other spam utilities

But can you hide your source code?

The short answer is no - to display a web page, the browser
has to be able to read the source, and if the browser can read
it, so can your visitors.

But there are ways to make it more difficult for your visitors to
read your source code. Here are some of them:

(1) Adding dozens of carriage returns at the top of your
HTML page

This one has fooled me a couple of times. All you see is a
lot of blank space - but just keep scrolling down and you'll find
the source code.

(2) Using frames

When you try to view the source code of a page using this
technique, all you see is the first ten or fifteen lines of HTML.
But just save the page to a folder on your hard disk and then
look for a sub-folder where the images in that page were
saved to.

In the sub-folder you'll find an HTML file that contains the source
code you were looking for. Again, this won't fool experienced
users, but it's worth a shot. Here is the code:
http://www.ezine-writer.com/framescode.html

(3) Disabling Right Click

This is an old trick and experienced surfers know how to get
around it. Here it is anyway - a script that disables Right Click:
http://www.ezine-writer.com/rightclick.html

(4) Disabling View Source

I searched high and low for a script that disables 'View Source'
in the browser menu bar, and couldn't find one.

Here is a script that is supposed to disable 'View Source' - I tried
it out in my browser (IE 6.0) and it didn't work, so perhaps it only
works in older versions of IE:

http://www.ezine-writer.com/no-source-code.html

(5) Encryption plus frames

This is a technique that will work on all but the most
experienced web surfers. Here is the code for doing it:
http://www.ezine-writer.com/hidesource.html

I've created a copy of my index page using the above
technique - if you click on View Source, all you see is a jumble
of characters: http://www.ezine-writer.com/encrypted.htm

Well, that's it! All you need to know about hiding your source code.

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**guanyu** · 10-11-2004, 11:07 PM

I have a question. Is there anyway to stop people from downloading your swf files? Because all they have to do is view source, find the link, and use some sort of download software.

**madboyv1** · 10-12-2004, 03:52 AM

Originally Posted by guanyu

I have a question. Is there anyway to stop people from downloading your swf files? Because all they have to do is view source, find the link, and use some sort of download software.

they don't even need to do that. all they need to do is find the file in there internet Cache.so there isn't really a way to stop them even if you were to find a way to mask the url.

**ti-design.bizhat.com** · 10-26-2004, 11:04 AM

well, every problems has its solution, right?
Here's how one can easily "break" those methods for hiding the code

(1) indeed, just scroll down,
(2) view the source of the main page, and look for <FRAME> and <IFRAME> elements. There there is SRC="pagename.html", so you can go with your brouser to the page in question, here "pagename.html", and view its source.
(3) trivial, just do View -> Page Source, OR disable javascript in your browser (this last one not possible with IE, but there are other browsers...)
(4) most probably this will not work on your browser anyway, but if it does just disable javascript
(5) also easy, shouldn't be any problem for anyone who feels confortable with javascript. For the rest: here is a solution. Download Forefox from www.mozilla.org, open the page http://www.ezine-writer.com/encrypted.htm and do File -> Save Page As... There you go...

Tony

**emptyspace** · 10-26-2004, 01:40 PM

Originally Posted by guanyu

I have a question. Is there anyway to stop people from downloading your swf files? Because all they have to do is view source, find the link, and use some sort of download software.

if their download your swf file, will they see the source code? the answer is no, rite?

**emofuture** · 10-26-2004, 03:44 PM

here's a source code encrypter (compatible with all browsers) i use from dynamicdrive.com: http://dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex9/encrypter.htm

here's what they have to say about it:

Description: Scramble the source of any chunk of code, or the entire webpage, using this creative script. The encrypted code will still be interpreted properly by the browser, just difficult for us humans to read.

It is recommended that you use this script to encrypt only the part(s) of your webpage that require encryption (ie: a script), rather than the entire page. This helps minimize the chance of any problems.

**ti-design.bizhat.com** · 10-26-2004, 05:08 PM

this is just the same encryption as in (5) above, using the JavaScript command unescape. Again, it is trivial to break it, but I guess most people will not do the effort unless it is important.
Tony

**slugs.bizhat.com** · 11-03-2004, 12:03 PM

Do you actually want to stop users from viewing the large part of your source code though? Like alot of people I've learned most of my HTML and other languages by seeing other peoples stuff I like, viewing the source and working out what makes it tick.

Surely copying is the most sincere form of flattery?