What is Hotlinking?
'''Hotlinking''' is an [[internet]] term for displaying an [[image]] on a [[website]] by [[link|linking]] to the website hosting the image. The link gets the source data of the picture each time it is needed. This avoids having the image on every website which uses it. So, a website owner uses a link to the picture such as ''<nowiki>https://example.com/picture.jpg</nowiki>''. When the hotlinking website is loaded, the image is loaded from the original website, which uses its [[Bandwidth_(computing)|bandwidth]], so it costs the hotlinked website money. For this reason many website owners use [[.htaccess]] files to prevent hotlinking. In some cases website owners use the .htaccess file to replace any hotlinked images with an offensive image to deter any other website owners from hotlinking. Hotlinked images are usually hosted on sites like imgur. The original image may be owned by the original website. It might be wrong to make a copy of the original image file for use on a different [[Webpage|web page]], without being careful to get proper permission. Hotlinking can also be used for file types other than images, including documents and videos. == Example == Hotlinking is known as the act of using another website's bandwidth by linking directly to their website's assets, such as images or videos. For example, say the owner of website A is hosting a particular image on their server. The owner of website B sees that image and decides they want it on their website as well. However, instead of downloading the image and hosting it on their own server, the owner of website B links directly to website A's domain. Therefore, instead of linking to the image via their own domain such as: * <code><nowiki>https://websiteB.com/path/to/image.jpg</nowiki></code> They would be instead using website A's domain: * <code><nowiki>https://websiteA.com/path/to/image.jpg</nowiki></code> Hotlinking someone's website assets can vastly increase their hosting costs. == How to avoid hotlinking == As a website user you should always