Image Protection and Digital Content Security

Overview

When you showcase your work on your website, you often face two distinct protection needs:

1. Public display assets (portfolio photos, product images, blog PDFs, and public media): You want visitors to browse smoothly, but you don't want them to easily right-click and save high-resolution images, you want to ensure your brand is visible when content is shared, and you want to prevent the leakage of sensitive metadata like GPS coordinates from mobile photos.
2. Digital products accessible only after payment (online video courses, e-books, paid handouts, design templates): You want buyers to easily view or download content online, but you must prevent unauthorized access to the file URLs.

This guide explains the protection settings for public websites (including watermarks) and the file security architecture for digital products.

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Part 1: Protecting Images and PDFs on Public Websites (“Media Library › Protection Settings”)

Go to the “Media Library › Protection Settings” tab in your dashboard (requires Owner, Admin, or Member permissions). After making changes, click “Save” at the bottom of the page. Changes will take effect immediately on your live site and editor preview—no need to republish your website.

1. Visitor Image Access (Three Website Toggles)

2. Automatically Protect Your Privacy (Remove GPS and Camera Info)

Studio photos, product shots, or home interior images taken with mobile devices often contain precise GPS coordinates, phone models, lens parameters, and author names in their original EXIF data. To protect your personal and location privacy, Kanorio categorizes images into three versions:

• Web Display Version: The optimized, scaled-down image visitors see on your site.
• Visitor Download Version (Anonymized): When you allow visitors to download images from the lightbox, the system re-encodes the image in its original dimensions and format (e.g., iPhone HEIC is converted to standard JPG) and forcefully strips GPS location, camera model, lens, and author information. You can decide whether to retain the “Copyright” field in your settings.
• Team Member “Download Original”: When you or your team members click “Download Original” in the Media Library file details, you receive the exact, untouched original file you uploaded.

3. Adding Watermarks to Website Images (Business Plan)

If your work is frequently reposted or misused by others, you can enable “Add watermark to website images” in the “Watermark” card on the same page. Watermarks are applied in real-time when delivered to visitors; the original photos in your Media Library remain unchanged. If you uncheck the box and save, the watermarks on your site will disappear immediately.

• Pattern: Choose “Brand Logo” (automatically uses the logo or icon uploaded in your site settings), “Text” (up to 60 characters, e.g., © Kanorio), or “Custom Image” (we recommend uploading a PNG with a transparent background).
• Layout and Position: Select “Single Position” to place it in any corner or the center (with a 3% safety margin from edges); select “Tiled” to repeat the watermark across the entire image with automatic spacing, making it the hardest to crop out.
• Size and Opacity: “Size” is the watermark's proportion to the image width (5% to 50%, default 20%); “Opacity” can be set from 10% to 100% (default 60%). The preview box on the right (or below on mobile) updates in real-time.
• Apply to which images (Multiple selection allowed):
  • Page Photos (Selected by default): Photos in modules like Hero, Image/Text, Cards, Albums, and Sliders.
  • Blog Post Images (Selected by default): Images inserted within blog posts.
  • Product Images (Not selected by default): Photos in product modules and product pages. Because Google Merchant Center guidelines do not accept watermarked product images, the system automatically uses clean original images for structured data, social sharing previews, and the cart/checkout pages, even if you select “Product Images.”
• Visitor downloads follow the display: Images displayed with watermarks on the web will also have watermarks when downloaded from the lightbox (if the original is PNG, GIF, or SVG, it will be output as a .webp file to preserve transparency).
• Which images never get watermarked? Brand logos, Favicons, headers, footers, post covers, and social sharing images (OG images) are never watermarked to ensure clear brand identity. Team members downloading originals from the Media Library will also never see watermarks.

Excluding Single Images from Watermarking

For photos provided by partners, award certificates, or images where details must be perfectly clear, you can disable watermarks for that specific image: go to the “Media Library”, open the image, and toggle off “Add watermark on website” in the details panel. This takes effect immediately without republishing. This exclusion persists even if you upload a new version of that image later.

If your site downgrades from Business to Pro or Free, your watermark settings are saved in the dashboard, but watermarks will automatically stop displaying on the live site.

4. Download Priority Rules for “Multimedia Content” Modules

For the “Multimedia Content” module on your site (used for public videos, audio, PDF catalogs, or file downloads), behavior is determined by individual item settings:

• Item-level Priority: Every video, audio, and PDF in the module has an independent “Allow download” toggle. Files that cannot be played directly on the web, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, EPUB, and ZIP, are always open for download.
• Cross-feature Prompts: If you disable “Allow visitor downloads” globally in Media Library protection settings but leave “Allow download” enabled for a specific multimedia item, a prompt will appear when editing that module to remind you that the item remains downloadable.
• Original File Downloads: Videos, audio, and Office documents available for download are not re-encoded to strip metadata like images. If your mobile video contains location data or your Word document contains author names that you don't want public, please remove them before exporting the file.

A Note on Security Boundaries: No website can prevent “Screenshots” As long as an image or text is displayed on a visitor's screen, they can capture it via mobile screenshots, desktop tools, or cameras. Enabling “Disable right-click and drag” and disabling downloads is intended to stop casual saving. Adding a “Watermark” ensures that even if an image is screenshotted or reposted, your brand source remains visible (though those familiar with web technology may still find the unwatermarked image URL via source code).

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Part 2: File Security Architecture for Digital Products and Online Courses

If you sell online video courses, audio materials, PDF e-books, research reports, or design asset packs in your Kanorio store, paid content is protected by three independent layers of security (see for setup, and for login and refund access rules):

1. Isolated Private Storage (No Public URLs)

All files for (course units, handouts, download packs) are stored in isolated private storage not bound to any public domain.

• These files have no fixed public URLs, cannot be crawled by search engines, and cannot be guessed by outsiders.
• When editing standard website pages or blog posts, the Media Library picker automatically isolates and hides digital product files to prevent you or your team from accidentally placing paid materials on public pages.

2. Support for “Streaming-only / PDF-only, No Original File Downloads”

Every unit of delivered content has an “Allow download” setting, which is disabled by default:

• When disabled: After buyers pay and log in to , they can only stream videos/audio via the built-in player or read PDFs via the built-in reader. No download button appears, preventing buyers from saving your course MP4s or PDF handouts to their devices for redistribution.
• When enabled: For e-book downloads, design templates (.zip), spreadsheets (.xlsx), or presentations (.pptx), use the AI assistant to enable “Allow download” for that unit so buyers can click to download.
• Free Preview: Units marked as “Preview” can be played in the course curriculum module on the product page without login; all other units are locked.

3. Short-lived Encrypted Signed URLs (Preventing Link Sharing)

When you allow buyers to download digital product files, the URL they receive is not permanent:

• Upon clicking “Download,” the system verifies the buyer's login status and access rights (must be an active, non-expired, and non-revoked buyer) and instantly issues a unique encrypted link valid for only 10 minutes. Online streaming and reading use the same signing process.
• Once 10 minutes pass, the link automatically expires. Even if someone copies and pastes the link to a public forum or group, others cannot download it.
• The buyer is unaffected: As long as they have access to the product, they can return to “Purchased Content” and click download to have a new short-lived link issued.

Tips

• If selling high-ticket online video courses, we recommend splitting the course into multiple chapter videos (up to 100 content items per digital product) and keeping “Show download button” disabled for video items, only allowing downloads for PDF handouts or exercise files.
• If you are concerned about portfolio or architectural photography being stolen by competitors, we recommend enabling both “Disable right-click and drag” and “Tiled” watermarks (with opacity set to 20%–35%). This allows visitors to see details while effectively preventing screenshot misuse.

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