Hotlinking, which is oftentimes referred to as bandwidth theft also, refers to linking to images that are on another Internet site. Essentially, if you have an Internet site with some images on it, another person can also create a site and instead of using their own images, they could put links directly to your images. Although this may not be such a major issue if you have one small personal Internet site, it can be something really serious if the images are copyrighted, as somebody might be aiming to copy your site and trick people. If your website hosting package has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you could exhaust your resources without getting real visitors, simply because the traffic will be consumed by the other site. That is why you need to consider preserving your content from being hotlinked - not only images, but also files, since in rare occasions other types of files are linked too.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

It will not require more than a couple of mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function that we provide even if this is the 1st web hosting account you use, as all of our shared hosting plans come with a very simple and easy to work with tool that will allow you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it has the same exact intuitive point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only have to choose the domain or subdomain you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to switch on this function only for a specific Internet site folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool we've designed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Once you switch on this function, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party website instead of your real images. You will only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section in the CP and choose the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. If necessary, you shall also have the option to enable the feature just for a specific subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the function is equally easy - go back to exactly the same section, check the box next to the specific website and then click on the Delete button.