OT question about photo websites and private photos

[Smitty Two]

Assuming this is a business and not a hobby, the cost of a USB drive seems absurdly trivial. Akin to the cost of a cardboard box that you'd ship a physical item of any value in.

[Metspitzer]

Winrar's web site:

and install Winrar and you can just right click on a directory full of photos. It will create a single file with all the photos.

The person on the other end (with Winrar installed) can just right click on the winrar you just emailed and it will extract the folder to a directory.

Windows 7 has built in code to make a zip file (same thing really) so you don't need to download anything. Since I have Winrar installed, I think it replaces Windows built in Zip version.

If you have Windows 7, try to highlight a group of photos and right click. Windows may allow you to make a Zip file.

As mentioned before, neither Winrar or Zip format will make the total size any smaller, it just makes one single file to email.

[Doug]

I know photobucket.com (my choice for free photo site) requires a password for private access to photos on their site but I never verified what you said tho.

If it were me, I'd opt for my own web site. I think you have better control and you can advertise too (if that helps any).

[trader4]

Show us a computer security expert that says that just using a URL that you then share with someone and rely on that alone is in any way a safe, secure and sufficient security protocol.

[David Kaye]

"Tegger" wrote

FTP is *NOT* going by the wayside. Anybody who creates or edits websites uses FTP all the time to transfer files. In fact, HTTP is really FTP via a different port, which is why you can use an FTP client to grab HTTP data.

[David Kaye]

wrote

Exactly. This is why FTP is really the only way to go.

[George]

Or "to the web" on a machine you host.

[George]

Most basic rule of security is that you maintain physical possession of something. If you host the files on a machine you control you are in possession of those files. If you put them in "the cloud" well who knows?

[George]

By native FTP is not secure because credentials are sent in the clear. sFTP is one answer.

[George]

He said he was interested in privacy and security. I don't think he would gain that by giving his stuff to google.

[George]

It isn't. That is the marketing folks speaking.

[George]

Lots of choices. But for FTP you want sFTP not FTP.

[CRNG]

On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:12:55 -0400, "Meanie" wrote in Re OT question about photo websites and private photos:

1. Put the photos into an encrypted .zip file with a prearranged password.
2. Upload the .zip file to a file share service such as SendSpace.com. They have free and paid accounts, depending on the volume that you need.
3. Email the link to the uploaded .zip file to your clients. They can then download and extract the photos.

I do the above with sensitive tax/financial data all the time and it works well.

[Home Guy]

You really are stupid, aren't you?

The OP wants to put some files in the hands of a third party. He doesn't want to burn them to a floppy or send a USB thumb drive in the mail.

I said -> USE A FREE FILE-LOCKER SERVICE. The recipient can simply click on the coded URL sent to them via e-mail to access (download) the files.

And what do we do with the files once the recipient has them?

---> We delete them from the file locker

[Home Guy]

You bunch of dumb shmucks.

You delete the files from the locker once the recipient has downloaded them.

And unless you publically advertise the coded links to the files as stored on the file-lockers, the only other way that some third-party is going to have the ability to access the files is if they have hacked either the sender's or the recipient's computer.

[Dave M.]

Home Guy,

The owner of the web-site probably backs up his servers on a regular basis. Anyone with "master user" access would be able to view these files.Your idea is not very secure, though it's not apparent what level of security the OP needs.

Dave M.

[Tegger]

"Meanie" wrote in news:k1h3gj$24k$ [e-mail]:

Correct.

You're obviously not really that interested, otherwise you'd have gone and checked it out yourself by now.

[Atila Iskander]

I have stopped using USB drives or sticks for a variety of reasons I now use (C10) SD cards. They are much faster to upload download than USB sticks

8 gb for $6.00 16 gb for $9.00

Plus if it's a business, just include the cost into your price, label them and give a rebate if they return it.

[Home Guy]

File lockers might or might not have good backup strategies. Many of them exist only to serve people that up and down-load music, movies, books, etc, which can (and would be) re-uploaded by uploaders in the case of a drive failure (or, far more likely, DMCA takedown request).

The point being that even if a file-locker has a good backup strategy, I doubt they would devote much hardare and expense to archiving files that are deleted by users - the only reason for doing so would be to privately look at them later. With thousands or millions of files passing through their systems - do you really think they have the time or inclination to do that?

Files can be stored in password-protected .zip and .rar formats and placed on free accounts on some file lockers for retrieval by specific clients. The OP questions the operational ergonomics of his clients having the necessary computer skills to deal with this additional level of complication. And I quite rightly agree that there are many people out there that would be incapable of unpacking such an archive, even if many or most of us reading this could do it in our sleep.

[gpsman]

You don't need an expert to know an unpublished random url is secure enough for a few hours for data few know exist.

I invite everyone to crack my current private Google Photo account files, but especially those I deleted last week... -----

- gpsman