Hotlink Protection

Stop other sites from embedding your images and media by enabling hotlink protection in hPanel or with .htaccess rules on your Hostinger-hosted website.

Block external sites from embedding your images and media — save bandwidth, stop leeches.

Enable in hPanel

1. Open your website dashboard.

2. Go to Hotlink Protection.

3. Toggle Enable Hotlink Protection on.

4. (Optional) Add allowed domains.

5. Click Save.

External requests for protected file types return 403 Forbidden.

Disable

Hotlink Protection → toggle off.

Allow specific domains

For trusted externals (a CDN, partner site, or your own domains):

1. In Hotlink Protection, find Allowed Domains.

2. Add domains, one per line.

3. Save.

Via .htaccess

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://(www\.)?yourdomain\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|svg|webp|mp4|pdf)$ - [F,NC]

This blocks image and media requests from domains other than yourdomain.com.

Allow more domains with extra RewriteCond lines:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://(www\.)?anotherdomain\.com/ [NC]

What it protects

Only the file types you specify — typically images, video, audio, and PDFs. HTML pages and other web content aren't affected.

---

Last updated: July 21, 2026