Hotlinking is a term that refers to the inclusion of images on a particular Internet site by using direct links. When you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their website or they may simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Consequently, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, since the images shall load from your web hosting account. This technique is oftentimes used for documents and other kinds of files as well. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the security tool that we have created and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Once you activate this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party site in place of your actual images. You'll only have to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain which your Internet site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. If required, you'll also have the option to enable the function just for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the feature is as easy - return to the same section, check the box next to the given website and then press the Delete button.