[bellyfullofbac]

Not very new, the technique's probably been around since the 2000's... e.g. you can't right click, save as on the web version of Instagram because all the images are background-images attached to DIVs. In the "old days" there'd be a 1x1 transparent GIF above the image, so any downloader would download that instead.

[trulyme]

More like 1990s, but yes.

[ravenstine]

What you and I describe isn't new, except you're talking about the use with DIV elements which don't have a "Save image as" menu item on right-click.

IMO, browsers should remove `background-image` support from IMG elements for that reason.