Password protecting a link

[csiwa28]

We have some webpages that are in a password protected section and on these webpages we have links to some streaming video that we have hosted on an outside server (bandwidth issues). Essentially these links are just masked and are not password protected like the web pages. Is there a way to password protect a link?

 

[Sheco]

If I understand correctly, you've already protected the page containing the [tt]<a href=...[/tt] and you want to now add password protection to the remote server to on which your media is hosted for the purpose of preventing others from requesting the content without first providing credentials.

Is that what you mean? Please clarify the phrase
'password protect the link."

 

[monksnake]

I think it means when you click on the link, it prompts for a password, if the password is correct, it takes you to the link.

If so, that is not a secure way to do it. The only way I can think to do that is to use Javascript (ajax for a table reference) and browsers can disable it.

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[csiwa28]

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough...a member logs in and once logged in they're redirected to a page. On that page is a link to a video that's hosted somewhere else. Basically, they're logging in to see the link, but once they copy the link, they can access it without having to log in.

 

[Sheco]

OK, so you need to set up some security on the remote server.

The easy way to do it is by configuring the web server software on the remote computer... Easy unless the content is hosted by a third party hosting company that does not allow you to configure their server.

If you can't configure security on the remote box, you could perhaps write an ASP for the remote server and link to the ASP instead of directly to your content. The ASP would then determine if the user is eligible to receive the content based on some value embedded in the request.

 

[csiwa28]

Unfortunately it's on a third party server and it doesn't support ASP.

 

[Sheco]

Maybe it supports something else instead like PHP ?

 

[csiwa28]

I checked with them and they don't support any webpages. It's strictly a streaming media server.

 

[Sheco]

If you have only a small fixed number of users that will legitimately consume the data, perhaps the third party host would be willing to set file level user permissions on the media.

On the other hand its probably a waste of time to even ask them to do this if there are a lot of different users or new users are regularly added.

Actually, you might just express your concerns to the third party company and see if they have any suggestions. If the company has been in this business for long they likely have encountered this issue before. It does not seem like an unreasonable request.

 

[csiwa28]

I'll check with them and see what they say. Thank you for your responses.