What Is Hotlinking and Should You Be Worried About It? (2025/620)

Ever found your images or PDFs showing up on someone else’s site — but still hosted on yours? That’s hotlinking, and it could be quietly draining your bandwidth, costing you money, and weakening your brand.

📌 In this episode, Charly explains:

✅ 
What hotlinking is and why it's considered bandwidth theft

✅ The difference between innocent hotlinking and malicious abuse

✅ Real costs and risks: server load, copyright issues, broken images, and SEO

✅ Practical ways to stop hotlinking using server rules or CDNs

✅ Why reaching out to small bloggers might work better than fighting them

🛡️ Whether you’re running a blog or a big e-commerce site, Charly recommends blocking hotlinking by default — before it becomes a problem.

🔗 Want help setting up server rules to protect your content? Reach out or ask your IT team.

🔗Join my locals community and strike up a conversation about the topic

About the Author Charly Leetham

Charly Leetham has been in technology for over 40 years - from earning her amateur radio license at 13 to founding and running Ask Charly Leetham, a digital services business serving small businesses worldwide. After losing $1 million in a franchise failure, she rebuilt from scratch and has kept her business running for nearly two decades through skill, systems, and relentless practicality.

She hosts the podcast Rise and Shine - Your Business Tech Boost with Charly Leetham and speaks about what it actually takes to build businesses that work and last - not just look good on paper.

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