Hotlinking, which is oftentimes referred to as bandwidth theft also, describes linking to images that are on another site. Basically, if you have a site with some images on it, someone else may also create a website and as opposed to using their own images, they could put links directly to your images. While this might not be such a big problem if you have a smaller personal Internet site, it'll be something very serious if the images are copyrighted, as somebody might be aiming to copy your site and trick people. If your hosting plan has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you may use up all your resources without getting real visitors, due to the fact that the traffic shall be consumed by the other Internet site. This is the reason why you should think about preserving your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also documents, since in rare occasions other types of files are linked too.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

It won't require more than a couple of clicks to switch on the hotlink security feature we provide even if this is the first hosting account you use, as all of our Linux website hosting include a very simple and easy-to-use tool that will allow you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it has the exact same easy-to-use point-and-click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only have to pick the domain or subdomain you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you wish to activate this feature only for a specific website folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can easily deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we have designed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you enable this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party site in place of your real images. You'll only need to check out the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain your Internet site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it is as basic as that. If necessary, you shall also have the option to activate the function for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the protection is equally simple - get back to the exact same section, check the box beside the particular website and then click on the Delete button.