How do I use the HotLink Protection feature in cPanel

cPanel - Security - Hotlink Protection

Hotlinking is known as the act of stealing someone's bandwidth by linking directly to your website content such as images or videos. This is sometimes referred to as Bandwidth Theft. This will use your Bandwidth to serve your files. Which may put you over your traffic quota with your hosting provider

Hotlinking can be useful for one sharing files, but it also may cause troubles for the owner of the content. Such actions can qualified as a copyright infringement, since images are displayed with no information from the author.

Enable hotlink protection

To enable hotlink protection, perform the following steps:

1) Click Enable. A new interface will open and display the Allowed referrers and Protected extension lists

2) Click Go back.

To allow specific sites to hotlink to your site, add their URL in the URLs to allow access menu.

To block direct access to files of specific types, add those file extensions to the Block direct access for the following extensions text box.

For example, to block all .jpg images, add .jpg to the Block direct access for the following extensions text box.

When you block these file types, others cannot hotlink to those types of files from your website, regardless of any other settings.

To allow Visitors access to specific content through the URL, select the Allow direct requests checkbox. For example, if you enable this setting, a visitor could enter
http://www.example.com/folder/example.jpg
As a URL to access the example.jpg file.

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.

Click Submit.

Disable hotlink protection

To disable hotlink protection, click Disable.