# Using Password-Protected Files

**The "External Files in Media Library" plugin allows you to integrate files from a wide variety of sources into your WordPress site. However, if the sources are password-protected, please note the following.**

## Use them, yes—but not from external sources

Files stored in a password-protected external source cannot simply be embedded in websites. Website visitors would not be able to access the files because they do not have the necessary login credentials.

The plugin now offers the option to integrate files from such sources into the media library. Doesn’t that mean you could use them? Yes, of course. But not in a way that requires visitors to load them from the external source every time.

Such files are therefore generally downloaded locally to the media library and ultimately treated like any other local file. However, they still retain all the characteristics of an external file, since they originally came from there.

## Affected External Sources

Several external sources are "naturally" affected by this rule, e.g., any FTP/SFTP sources. Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Cloud Storage, and AWS S3 are also included, provided that public access has not been enabled for them.