by Jose Mortellaro 5 (1 reviews)

Selective Image Guard | A deterrent for unauthorized downloads and scraping

Name: Selective Image Guard | A deterrent for unauthorized downloads and scraping
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)
Author: Jose Mortellaro

Protect your images from unauthorized downloads and scraping.

Selective Image Guard ranks #16,077 among WordPress.org plugins with 100+ active installations, is #1,407 of 6,299 in the Media category, a 5/5 rating from 1 reviews, and was last updated May 21, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.

Tested up to WP 6.8 (Current: 7.1)

v2.1.4 Current Version v2.1.4

Updated 3 months ago Last Update on 21 May, 2026

Refreshed 6 hours ago Last Refreshed on

#1,407 of 6,299 in Media Top 25% by installs

View on WordPress.org

Rank

#16,077

-38 this week

Active Installs

100+

-23.7%

KW Avg Position

40.3

— No change

Downloads

1.1K

+4 today

Support Resolved

— No change

Rating

100%

Review 5 out of 5

5 (1 reviews)

Next Milestone 200

Total Progress 22%

100+ 200+

3,022

Ranks to Climb

Growth Needed

8,000,000

Active Installs

Pro

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Rank Changes

Current #16,077

Change

Best #

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Active Installs Growth

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Active Installs 0,000,000+

Growth +0.0%

Peak 0,000,000

Downloads Growth

Downloads

Growth

Peak

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Reviews & Ratings

5.0

1 reviews

Overall 100%

1 (100%)

0 (0%)

Security History

Source: WPVulnerability

No known vulnerabilities on record for Selective Image Guard. Checked 1 month ago.

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Plugin Details

Version: 2.1.4
Last Updated: May 21, 2026
Requires WP: 4.9+
Tested Up To: 6.8
PHP Version: 7.4 or higher
Author: Jose Mortellaro

Support & Rating

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5
Reviews: 1
Support Threads: 0
Resolved: 0%

Keywords

anti-scraping content-protection image protection photography security

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TL;DR

AI summary of the plugin's readme

This plugin is for photographers, designers, content creators, and site owners who want to discourage theft of specific images on their WordPress site. It solves the problem of image scraping and unauthorized downloading by blurring protected images during screenshot or print attempts and detecting devtools or disabled JavaScript.

Desktop screenshot prevention
Print protection
Selective per-image protection
DevTools detection
JavaScript disabling detection
Bulk protection (PRO)
Featured images protection (PRO)
WooCommerce product galleries (PRO)

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Selective Image Guard | A deterrent for unauthorized downloads and scraping

No. While this plugin provides strong deterrents, a determined user can still bypass them, for example, by taking a physical screenshot of the screen. However, these protections are highly effective at stopping most casual users and automated scrapers. But don’t underestimate the value of a deterrent. Think about the methods used to keep mosquitoes away. Even if they don’t work 100%, would you rather be surrounded by hundreds of mosquitoes or just a couple? That’s the idea of a deterrent. I can still see the protected images when I open the DevTools The plugin does not protect images for users who have the privilege to upload files. Please test it in a browser where you are not logged in.

No. Only images that you explicitly mark as protected in the media library will be affected.

The protected images will include the following headers: header( 'Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT' ); // Already expired header( 'Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0' ); header( 'Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0', false ); // For Internet Explorer header( 'Pragma: no-cache' ); These headers instruct browsers and CDNs not to store the protected images in cache. In general, CDNs should respect these headers. If, for any reason, your CDN does not, you can exclude URLs containing /protect-image/ from being cached. If a CDN still caches the images despite these rules, the protection will not work. However, this would require two failures: the CDN ignoring the headers and the cache exclusion not taking effect. For this reason, CDNs should normally not be an issue.

Yes. The key protections rely on JavaScript to detect user actions. However, the plugin will still provide a warning for users who have JavaScript disabled.

The plugin may interfere with how protected images are indexed by search engines. This is why Selective Image Guard is designed to be selective—you can choose which images to protect, ensuring that other, unprotected images remain fully accessible to search engine crawlers.