Online file sharing is at the heart of every internet transaction, and it is sometimes difficult to decide which is the best way to share a file.  Not too long ago we used telephone modems to send files to each other via FTP ( File Transfer Protocols).  If you wanted more than one person to access these files, you usually had to have multiple phone lines to make this direct connection.   Then the internet became popular and we used our telephone modems to connect to a network of computers, and some of us used Gopher to search for information.  This was before the web browser was born.  Even then we had to use FTP, and the settings sometimes were a challenge to configure.  File Transfer Protocol has not changed much, but the ability for someone else to access your computer has created risk.  Being online and exposed to an infinite network of computers can be pretty scary when one wants to share files online. Read the rest of this entry »

What do you do when you need to share mp3 files and don’t have a server to host them on?  There are several free and paid mp3 file-hosting programs that you can download to your computer, allowing others to access the mp3 files that you are hosting.  With this comes a set of potential security problems that we will describe below.

The moment you install software on your computer, you have granted access to the outside world. Even if you have granted permission to only a few friends, the potential now exists that someone you don’t want on your computer can access personal information as well. Read the rest of this entry »