Hotlinking, which is sometimes labeled bandwidth theft too, identifies linking to images which are on another site. Basically, if you have a site with some images on it, some other person can also create a website and rather than using their own images, they can put links directly to your images. While this might not be such a big problem if you have a small personal website, it will be something rather serious if the images are copyrighted, due to the fact that someone can be trying to copy your site and cheat people. If your website hosting plan has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, chances are you'll use up all your resources without getting legitimate visitors, because the traffic will be consumed by the other website. This is the reason why you should think about shielding 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 Shared Hosting

You can easily secure your content if you create an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but just in case you do not have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all shared hosting package deals that we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be activated in 2 simple steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the main folder or in a subfolder and you shall be ready. You do not need any computer programming skills or any experience with such matters, as there will be nothing else to do. If you'd like to turn off the protection at some time, you can see all of the websites that are protected inside the very same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button beside each of them.