Don’t know how to enable leech protection in cPanel? We can help you.

Leech Protection is an easy to configure security feature by cPanel.

If we publicly post usernames and passwords to a restricted area of our site, it will lead to leaching. This will allow other visitors to use the login information and access the restricted resources.

As part of our Server Management Services, we assist our customers with several cPanel queries.

Today, let us see how we can enable Leech Protection in cPanel.

Enable Leech Protection in cPanel

cPanel provides protection against leeching by limiting the number of times a user can access a secure area of the website within a two-hour period.

For example, we can limit users to four logins over a two-hour period. Once it exceeds the login time, we can redirect them to another URL, send an alert e-mail or even disable the account.

To enable leech protection our Support Techs suggest following the below steps:

1. In the security section of the cPanel home screen, click Leech Protection.
2. Select the directory to protect. We can click the folder icon next to the folder name to open the folder.
3. Then click Edit.
4. Under Set up, Leech Protection, provide the number of logins per username in a two-hour period.
5. Give a URL to redirect users to another web page when their account compromises.
6. To receive an e-mail alert when compromised, select the Send Email Alert check box and then type an e-mail address.
7. To disable accounts that are compromised, select the Disable Compromised Accounts check box.
8. Eventually, click Enable.

Manage users

In addition, to add, edit and delete users, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to a directory that we wish to protect with user-level protection.
2. Click the appropriate folder icon.
3. Select the desired folder’s name. A new interface will appear.
4. Click Manage Users to navigate to cPanel’s Directory Privacy interface for that folder (cPanel >> Home >> Security >> Directory Privacy).

To do so manually, edit the /home/USERNAME/.htpasswds/public_html/passwd file, where USERNAME represents the account name.

Disable Leech Protection in cPanel

If in case we need to disable leech protection, follow these steps:

1. In the Security section of the cPanel home screen, click Leech Protection.
2. Click the name of the directory for which we want to disable leech protection. We can click the folder icon next to the folder name to open the folder.
3. Then click Edit.
4. Under Disable Protection, click Disable.

[Failed to enable or disable? We’d be happy to assist you further]

Conclusion

In short, Leech Protection is an easy to configure security feature by cPanel. Today, we saw an effective way from our Support Techs to configure the same.