Protecting Sites From Bandwidth Stealing (Hotlinking)

Hotlinking (also called file leeching, remote linking, direct linking, bandiwidth stealing or bandwidth banditism) is a term used for describing a situation when a web page of one domain owner is directly linking to images (or other multimedia files) on the web host of another domain owner, usually using an <IMG> tag. If a domain is hotlinked, its owners may face the problem of excessive bandwidth usage.

To protect your domain from hotlinking:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.
2. Click Hotlink Protection in the Hosting group.
3. Click Enable to enable the protection from hotlinking.
4. Specify the extensions of files you wish to be protected from hotlinking (e.g. jpg, bmp, etc) in the Protected files extensions field. When listing several file extensions, separate them with spaces.
5. Click OK.

You can also manage the list of domains that are allowed to directly link to your domain files.

To add a domain to the list of friendly domains:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.
2. Click Hotlink Protection in the Hosting group.
3. Input the domain name in the Friendly domains field.
4. Click Add.
5. Repeat steps 2 and 3 to add other domains, if necessary, and click OK when finished.

To remove a domain from the list of friendly domains:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.
2. Click Hotlink Protection in the Hosting group.
3. Select the domain in the Friendly domains field.
4. Click Remove.
5. Ñlick OK.