To clarify though, "The presence of .htaccess doesn't" mean the site is password protected. You can also get BasicAuth to function from the main apache configs (it doesn't need to occur in an .htaccess file at all). Also, BasicAuth isn't unique to apache and .htaccess is.
Also also: I wouldn't say it's dumb at all, no. It's hard to know how to ask the question until you know how to ask the question.
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