Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. To put it differently, if you build a website, some other person may want to use the images that you have and rather than downloading them from your Internet site and then uploading them to their own website, they could simply put links straight to your website. That way, when a visitor opens their site, the images will be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, along with the copyright issues which could develop or that somebody may be trying to trick people into thinking that they are actually on your website. In rare occasions, documents and other types of files can also be linked in the very same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this sort of situations, you can permit hotlink protection for your website.
Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting
It won't require more than several clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function that we offer even if this is the 1st website hosting account which you use, due to the fact that all our Linux website hosting feature a quite simple and easy to work with tool that will enable you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it provides the exact same intuitive point-and-click interface. As soon as you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only need to select the domain or subdomain that you would like to secure from a drop-down list. If you wish to switch on this feature only for a particular website folder, you've got the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear within this section and you can easily deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we have designed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you switch on this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party website instead of your actual images. You will only have to visit the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. If necessary, you will also have the option to activate the feature just for a specific subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the protection is as simple - get back to the very same section, check the box alongside the specific site and then click on the Delete button.