cPanel Tutorials - How to Manage Password and Leech Protection hi there this is Lawrence Simon a technical writer on the documentation team at cPanel your hosting platform of choice this video will demonstrate directory privacy and leech protection in cPanel let's say that you have a lot of cat photos that you want to share with a client and you only want that client to be able to access the photos directory privacy allows you to force a visitor to enter a username and password to view a directories contents sometimes people share those accounts with others when they're not supposed to leech protection allows you to manage access for that username in order to prevent users from sharing accounts and to track when they do let's go ahead and login to cPanel here we are in the cPanel home interface let's scroll down to the files group and then click directory privacy the directory privacy interface will appear click the Settings button to select the starting directory for the interface I'll select the document root directory and then click Save Changes the directory privacy navigation interface will refresh to navigate into a directory click the folder icon to navigate up one directory click up one level to select a directory click the directories name I'll select my cat photos directory a new interface will appear select the password protect this directory checkbox then enter a name for the protected directory this acts as a label in the system and then click Save a confirmation message will appear click go back to return to the directory privacy interface now that we've password-protected the directory we need to create a user account to allow a visitor to access the directory and to reuse her name then enter a password for that user name and confirm it the password strength bar indicates the relative strength of that password to have the system generate a secure password for you click password generator you can configure all sorts of length and complexity requirements for the generated password but I think I'll stick with the password I entered when you're ready click Save confirmation message appears that displays the username click go back let's see how this looks to the visitor I'll open another tab in my web browser and I'll navigate to the cat photos directory a dialog box appears that asks for a username and password let's try to log in without a username and password nope the system won't let you in there now I'll enter the username and password and we can see the contents of the directory look at the pretty kitty if you wish to remove password protection from a directory go back to the directory privacy interface and navigate to that directory notice how the icon now has a lock symbol that means the folder has directory privacy let's click the directory name and now we'll deselect the password protect checkbox and click Save a confirmation message appears so what happens when a user shares their password with others leach Protection can help you detect that scroll down to the security group and click leach protection a new interface will appear click the Settings button to select the starting directory for this interface I'll select the document root directory and click Save Changes your browser will refresh the interface to navigate into a directory click the folder icon to navigate up one directory click up one level to select a directory click the directories name a new interface will appear first we'll set a limit for the number of times that a username can login to that directory within a two-hour window we recommend for because a user might have connection issues the Wi-Fi goes down repeatedly those kind of things that happen on the Internet however for this demonstration I'll select one then we'll set a URL to redirect users who log in more than that number of times I recommend that you point them to a page that you create specifically for these users that way you can look at your error log file and see their IP addresses and the pages that refer them to your site if you see a lot of redirections from a website blog or forums the odds are pretty good that someone posts at a username and password for others to use watch our errors and visitors video for more information about how to review log files now we can select whether to send an alert when someone logs in too many times and the email address to alert finally we can select disable compromised accounts to automatically disable accounts that log in too many times if someone triggers leech protection you'll need to set a new password for them with the directory protection interface click enable to save your settings a confirmation message will appear that displays your leech protection settings let's test this I'll log in to the directory then I'll take my laptop to the library and login from there so it looks like I'm logging in from a different network location hey Siri where's the nearest library [Music] there a warning message appears and the system sends an email to my account that warns me about this username to disable each protection let's go back to the leach Protection interface and navigate to the folder notice the icon next to it that means that it has leach protection enabled click on the folders name a new interface will appear and then scroll down to disable protection and click disable a confirmation message will appear click go back to return to the leach protection interface if you use third-party software to manage this kind of security the interface posts the location and file for you to enter into that program if you click manage users the directory privacy interface for this directory will appear and you can make adjustments to the user accounts in that interface I'll select the user that we just created and then delete them a confirmation message will appear all posts directory privacy and leach protection documentation links in the description of this video ok for more information 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