remote file existance when protected by a .htaccess

Hi, I have a form where the user specifies a remote image so it can be made into a thumb, before that I am trying to make sure the image exists using this code: $chk_gallery = @fopen ($remote_image, "r"); if (!$chk_gallery) {echo "<font color=red><b>ERROR:</b></font><br>Unable to fetch the remote image"; exit;} fclose($chk_gallery); which works great except I have been getting some 403 access denied errors for some sites, checking I see that they are protected by a htaccess file (that checks the referrer) so i tried putting header('referer: domain') where domain is the parse_url['host'] of $remote_file but that too has failed... Any ideas? Thanks, Mag ===== ------ - The faulty interface lies between the chair and the keyboard. - Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster! - Smile, everyone loves a moron. :-) _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com