Lots of requests for icons in apache logs

[fatherwilliam]

I'm running a few personal webpages on my home computer and I was just checking my apache access_log and I found tons of requests for gif files in an icons directory. They seem to be coming from a lot of different IPs too.

cpe-76-91-194-86.socal.res.rr.com - - [25/Jan/2008:19:58:43 -0800] "GET /icons/blank.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 148
cpe-76-91-194-86.socal.res.rr.com - - [25/Jan/2008:19:58:43 -0800] "GET /icons/back.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 216
cpe-76-91-194-86.socal.res.rr.com - - [25/Jan/2008:19:58:43 -0800] "GET /icons/compressed.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 1038
cpe-76-91-194-86.socal.res.rr.com - - [25/Jan/2008:19:58:43 -0800] "GET /icons/folder.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 225

adsl196-174-123-206-196.adsl196-4.iam.net.ma - - [25/Jan/2008:11:45:18 -0800] "GET /icons/blank.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 148
adsl196-174-123-206-196.adsl196-4.iam.net.ma - - [25/Jan/2008:11:45:18 -0800] "GET /icons/back.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 216
adsl196-174-123-206-196.adsl196-4.iam.net.ma - - [25/Jan/2008:11:45:18 -0800] "GET /icons/layout.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 276
adsl196-174-123-206-196.adsl196-4.iam.net.ma - - [25/Jan/2008:11:45:18 -0800] "GET /icons/text.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 229

etc

Has anybody else experienced this? What do these people stand to gain by accessing these images?

Thanks.

[Hu]

They use your bandwidth to transfer the images, instead of using the bandwidth of the site that is serving them the HTML.

I suggest logging the HTTP referrer header to find why these clients are accessing your server. I suspect you will find that some website has linked to your system. It may even be an accident. You say you are using a home connection, so I would expect that you have a dynamically assigned IP address. If so, perhaps the previous user of that IP address was associated with the website that is now directing these clients to download your images.