How To Enable Hotlink Protection

Link: https://support.brilliantdirectories.com/support/solutions/articles/12000013802-how-to-enable-hotlink-protection

A hotlink is when a 3rd party website uses the bandwidth to display content from the website on theirs.  A common example of this is when someone copies the source URL of an image that is hosted on the website and uses that URL to display the image on someone else website.  Even though the image is being displayed on their website, the BD website bandwidth is being used in order to display that image.


Also, enabling hotlink protection will prevent all other websites from displaying the BD website images directly.  While most social media and other websites that make frequent use of content sourced from other websites have automated methods of displaying the content without using the website bandwidth, websites that do not have these systems in place will not be able to display images or other content that has been designated to be blocked.


There is an option with Cloudflare:

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170026-Understanding-Cloudflare-Hotlink-Protection


The other option is to do it directly in the htaccess file:

https://mediatemple.net/community/products/dv/204644230/prevent-hotlinking-with-a-.htaccess-file