Hotlink Protection

Prevent unauthorized use of your media files by blocking external websites from embedding or linking directly to your CDN-hosted assets.

Hotlink Protection restricts access to your CDN Resource by verifying the Referer header in each HTTP request. When enabled, it ensures that only requests originating from your allowed domains can retrieve content from your CDN. Requests coming from unauthorized sources — such as external websites directly embedding your files — are blocked or redirected automatically.

Why Use Hotlink Protection?

Hotlink Protection helps you:

• Protect bandwidth – Prevent others from using your CDN capacity to serve their own content.

• Secure digital assets – Stop unauthorized sharing or embedding of your hosted media.

• Reduce server load – Block high-traffic external sites from consuming resources.

• Maintain brand control – Ensure your content appears only on trusted domains.

• Prevent abuse – Stop third-party sites from monetizing your media.

How Hotlink Protection Works

Hotlink Protection checks the Referer field of every HTTP request. If the Referer does not match your whitelisted domain list, the CDN automatically denies or redirects the request.

Action	Description
Allow	Serves content when the Referer is from an authorized source.
Block	Rejects requests from unauthorized sites.
Blacklist	Denies access specifically to the domains listed in your blacklist.
Redirect	Sends unauthorized users to a specified page or image.

Add multiple allowed domains to the whitelist for multi-site deployments (e.g., www.medianova.com, cdn.medianova.com).