htaccess disable directory browsing, disable file listing, disable file access

There may be some personal or secure data in a file, that you want to hide from the end user, when it is viewed through a web browser.


Ex: http://www.example.com/user_files/24/chat.txt

In the above scenario, if the file "chat.txt" contains a secure data, and you dont want to allow end users to directly access the file, or to disable the file listing in the folder "user_files" or "24", use the below code in your .htaccess file inside "user_files" folder:

Options -Indexes
order allow,deny
deny from all