What is Leech Protection?
The Leech Protect utility available within cPanel enables administrators to prevent users from publicly disclosing passwords used to access restricted areas of a website. It does this by limiting the number of times a user can log in to these restricted areas. It gives site administrators the capability to redirect accounts to preferred pages, or even suspend specific users, in case of such violations. Admins can set the maximum number of logins according to their preference, but the default value is set to 2 hours. If this limitation is exceeded, the user is assumed to be sharing login details and is redirected or suspended. In this way, leech protection provides additional defenses against a breach into the system.
Enabling Leech Protection in cPanel
To enable leech protection, just follow these 6 steps.
- First, log in to your cPanel account using your username and password.
- Locate the Security menu and click on the icon labelled Leech Protect.
- After clicking on the Leech Protect icon, a pop will appear. Select the Document Root of your website, keep the other settings as is, and click GO.
- On the next interface, please select the folder you wish to protect by clicking on its name.
- Then, on the next screen, enter the required values and parameters according to your preferences. You’ll have options to select the number of logins allowed per user in a 2-hour period, which URL to redirect suspected leechers to, whether or not you’d like to receive an email notification, and whether or not you’d like to automatically disable suspected accounts.
- Once you’ve finished making your selections, click the Enable button to finalize your settings.
And there you have it! Leech protection is active, and suspicious user accounts can be automatically dealt with.
