Nginx Hotlink Protection

To block hotlink protection or bandwidth stealing, you can add the following to the server configuration of your website.

valid_referers yourdomain.tld www.yourdomain.tld;

if ($invalid_referer) {
    return 403;
}

If you need to allow hotlinks from a specific domain, you can edit the valid_referers line and add the URL. For allowing access without any referral, you can use “none” instead of the domain name. For example

valid_referers none yourdomain.tld www.yourdomain.tld;

If you only want to limit access to images and videos, you can put the above code in a location block like

location ~* \.(mp4|gif|png|jpg|jpeg|css|ico)$ {
    valid_referers  yourdomain.tld www.yourdomain.tld;
    if ($invalid_referer) {
       return 403;
    }
}