DL-Q&A

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What does the Anti-Leech-Feature do?

If you want to activate this feature please note that everything good also has its bad sides. Read this text carefully and then decide if you really need to activate it.

When this option is enabled the user will not see the real URL of files anywhere. After the user clicks on the Download-link on your site he will still get to the "Download will start in 5 seconds"-page. However after 5 seconds the browser is not forwarded to the file but instead again to the script with a special parameter. Then the script will send the file directly to the browser.

That alone isn't bad. However - Download Managers are a good thing, they let users resume downloads, download files later and much more. This method will bypass most download managers and the browser will download the file itself. While this is good for protecting your links (browsers normally don't display the full URL of the file), that also decreases the comfort of your site.

This option can do much more - if Leech-Protection is deactivated, the script will deny downloads coming from other sites. If it is activated the script will log each illegal access to a Log-File. You can then view the file via the DL-Admin-script to find out who steals your links.

You can also choose to let the script notify you per email when a user tries to download a file and isn't coming from your site (Leech-Alert Emails).

Please note that this option doesn't make it impossible to find out the real URL of files. Even though the script doesn't show it anywhere, it has to tell it the browser so that it can download the file. If something is told somewhere, it can be found out somehow. However this is the best protection you can have for your URLs.