Hotlinking (also called file leeching, remote linking, direct linking, bandwidth 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 pages of another domain owner. If your domains are hotlinked, you may face the problem of excessive bandwidth usage.

How To Enable Hotlink Protection

How To Enable Hotlink Protection

To enable hotlink protection, perform the following steps:

1 – Open cPanel (yourdomain/cpanel).
2 – Click on (Hotlink Protection) from Security section.
3 – Click Enable.
4 – To allow specific sites to hotlink to your site, add their URLs to the List the URLs to which you wish to allow access list.
5 – To block direct access to files of specific types, add those file extensions to the Block direct access for the following extensions list.
6 – To allow visitors access to specific content through the URL, select the Allow direct requests option.
7 – To redirect requests for certain content, enter the URL to which you want to redirect your visitor in the Redirect the request to the following URL text box.
8 – Click Submit.
Disable hotlink protection
To disable hotlink protection, click Disable.

Video: