Hotlinking, which is oftentimes referred to as bandwidth theft also, identifies linking to images that are on another site. Simply, if you have a site with some images on it, another individual may also build a site and instead of using their own images, they can put links straight to your images. Even though this might not be such a big problem if you have one small personal site, it can be something rather serious if the images are copyrighted, due to the fact that someone could be attempting to copy your site and cheat people. If your website hosting package has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, chances are you'll use up all your resources without getting actual visitors, because the traffic shall be consumed by the other website. This is why you need to think about protecting your content from being hotlinked - not just images, but also documents, since in rare occasions other types of files are linked too.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

It will not take more than several mouse clicks to enable the hotlink security function that we offer you even if this is the 1st website hosting account that you use, because all our cloud hosting come with a quite simple and user-friendly tool that will permit you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the same easy-to-use point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only need to choose the domain or subdomain you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you wish to enable this function only for a certain website folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you could turn off the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given website and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you do not want other people to use your images on their sites without your consent, you can easily switch on the hotlink security function, that is provided with all semi-dedicated server package deals. Rather than setting up an .htaccess file by hand in the website folder and writing some code in it, which is the conventional method to deny direct linking to files, you may use an exceptionally simple tool, which we have integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. By using it, you'll only need to choose the website that needs to be secured and our system will do the rest. Also, you can decide if the .htaccess file needs to be created straight inside the root folder or in a subfolder, in case you want to activate the hotlink security feature just for some content and not for the whole site. Stopping it is just as easy - you will only have to mark the checkbox beside the respective website and to click on the Delete button.