Hotlinking, which is sometimes labeled bandwidth theft too, identifies linking to images that are on another website. In simple terms, if you have a site with some images on it, another person could also create a site and as opposed to using their own images, they can put links straight to your images. Even though this may not be such a serious problem if you have a smaller personal site, it shall be something rather serious if the images are copyrighted, due to the fact that somebody can be trying to copy your Internet site and trick people. If your website hosting plan has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, you may use up all your resources without getting actual website visitors, as the traffic shall be consumed by the other Internet site. This is the reason why you need to think about preserving your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also documents, as in rare occasions other kinds of files are linked also.
Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting
It shall not take more than a number of mouse clicks to enable the hotlink security feature that we offer you even if this is the 1st web hosting account which you use, since all our Linux web hosting packages come with a simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it offers the same intuitive point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only have to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you wish to activate this service only for a specific website folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you could disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given website and pressing the Delete button.