Hotlinking, which is oftentimes labeled bandwidth theft also, identifies linking to images which are on another website. Simply, if you have a website with some images on it, someone else can also create a website and rather than using their own images, they may put links directly to your images. Although this may not be such a serious problem if you have a small personal website, it can be something really serious if the images are copyrighted, because someone may be trying to copy your website and cheat people. If your web hosting package has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you will use up all your resources without getting actual site visitors, as the traffic will be consumed by the other Internet site. This is why you should consider shielding your content from being hotlinked - not only images, but also files, as in rare occasions other types of files are linked also.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting

It will not take more than a number of clicks to activate the hotlink protection function that we offer you even if this is the 1st web hosting account you use, as all of our Linux cloud website hosting include a very simple and easy-to-use tool that will allow you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is part of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it provides the very same intuitive point & click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply need to select the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to enable this service only for a particular Internet site folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection will appear in this section and you will be able to deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you open a semi-dedicated server account and you learn that another person is linking to your files without your approval, you will be able to easily cut them off by enabling the hotlink security function which we provide. While the standard way to do that is to generate an .htaccess file, we have a special tool which is able to execute this automatically and you'll only have to select the Internet site in question and to decide whether our system should set up the necessary file within the main folder or within a subfolder. The tool is part of our custom Hepsia Control Panel and provides exactly the same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it with no problems even in case you have never used any website hosting service before. You are able to switch off the hotlink security feature for any website/folder with a click through the exact same section.