Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. To put it differently, if you create a website, some other person may want to use the images that you have and instead of downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their website, they may simply put links to your Internet site. That way, each time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, along with the copyright issues that could develop or that somebody may be trying to deceive people into believing that they're actually on your website. In rare occasions, documents and other kinds of files could also be linked in the same exact way. To stop this from happening and to avoid such situations, you could activate hotlink protection for your website.