Sitecore - www.stockpick.nl

The link option is really cool to give a lot of explanation, like a link to the company’s confluence or wiki. Or a document or image from the media library. What if the media is not actually intended to be live? Don’t put in in the media library. But if the case is it is on this way better for deployment and maintains and it is not a secure media.

You can put rights on the document disallow read right for the extranet\Everyone domain. Or better set publish restrictions on the media item,set to not Publishable to avoid it exists in the web database. But here starts the trouble. The help link to the media is not displayed anymore, and if you use an external link instead of a media link the link is broken.

The solution to display media items with not Publishable publish restrictions.

Use a special link like the rich text editor does. (link type external, Unfortunately, a media link with reference is not an option now)

For example: /shell/Controls/Rich%20Text%20Editor/-/media/DF4636A5A49D4575BB9C3C5349704B95.ashx

Or I think this is the best solution use the shell site context somethings like:
/-/media/technical/cmsmanual/stockcodes.ashx?sc_site=shell