Hotlinking, which is sometimes referred to as bandwidth theft also, describes linking to images which are on another site. In simple terms, if you have a website with some images on it, another individual can also build a website and rather than using their own images, they could put links directly to your images. While this might not be such a major issue if you have a smaller personal Internet site, it'll be something quite serious if the images are copyrighted, as somebody may be attempting to copy your site and trick people. If your website hosting plan has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you will run out of resources without getting real visitors, simply because the traffic will be consumed by the other Internet site. This is why you should consider protecting your content from being hotlinked - not only images, but also documents, since in rare occasions other types of files are linked also.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

It will not take more than several clicks to enable the hotlink security function we offer even if this is the 1st website hosting account you use, due to the fact that all our Linux cloud web hosting services include a very simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it provides the very same intuitive point-and-click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply have to select the domain or subdomain you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you wish to switch on this feature only for a certain site folder, you will have the option to do that. All Internet sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you will be able to deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given website and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the security tool we've designed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you enable this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site instead of your real images. You'll only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain which your site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. If required, you shall also have the option to activate the function just for a particular subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the protection is equally effortless - go back to the same section, check the box alongside the specific site and then click on the Delete button.