BigScoots Delivers Advanced Hotlink Protection that Prevents Unauthorized Image Sharing without Compromise

A new BigScoots Advanced Hotlink Protection feature allows clients using Cloudflare Enterprise to simplify the protection of their site images.

BigScoots, a site-specific, fully managed WordPress hosting provider, announced the introduction of a new Advanced Hotlink Protection feature that allows clients using Cloudflare Enterprise to simplify the protection of their site images from authorized use by others.

Clients want to protect their proprietary site images from nefarious use, but not at the expense of blocking legitimate sites that can help them promote their business or content.”
— Zach Aufort, Performance Services Specialist at BigScoots

Hotlink Protection prevents other sites from using your images, reducing the bandwidth consumed by the origin server and content delivery network (CDN). Most CDN and hosting providers offer hotlink protection to clients. However, these hotlink protection features often create more missed opportunities than advantages because they restrict sharing by all sites, including legitimate sites. So it is not uncommon for clients to turn this feature off.

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“Clients want to protect their proprietary site images from nefarious use, but not at the expense of blocking legitimate sites that can help them promote their business or content,” stated Zach Aufort, Performance Services Specialist at BigScoots. “That’s why our engineers built an Advanced Hotlink Protection feature that gives our clients protection without compromising potential opportunities.”

BigScoots’s new Advanced Hotlink Protection feature still prevents authorized use of image sharing. However, this new “advanced” feature evaluates the sites trying to access or embed site images against a whitelist of approved sites. If they are approved, the Advanced Hotlink Protection feature will permit access. If not, access will be blocked.

This whitelist includes pre-approved sites or email platforms with high credibility or authority for legitimate image sharing. Early whitelist testing has demonstrated success in identifying, and qualifying, nearly all client-approved and requested sites. If a site is not included, clients can request that the BigScoots team evaluate a site for credibility and authoritativeness to add to the whitelist.

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This allows BigScoots clients using Cloudflare Enterprise to easily use their custom enterprise settings to enable protection without sacrificing opportunities for their images to be picked up by sites that can help them reach new audiences.

BigScoots WordPress Speed Optimization Services
Cloudflare Enterprise is included for all BigScoots WordPress Optimized (WPO) and managed dedicated server clients using WordPress Speed Optimization services to optimize the performance of their hosted sites.

Experience the Advantage of BigScoots
Learn more about BigScoots Managed WordPress Hosting plans or WordPress Speed Optimization services. Visit the BigScoots website and start a chat with the BigScoots team to get started.