Best way to get large files from a friend?

On 2013.04.10 20:04 , DaveS wrote:
On 4/10/2013 4:05 PM, Alan Browne wrote:

I used to use
http://www.yousendit.com/compare-plans
Which has a free plan up to 50MB file size and up to 2 GB at a time
online. The sender uploads the file there with destination e-mail
address(es). The receiver gets a link and pulls the file. Transaction
is over.

Since DropBox I haven't used yousendit at all.

Your point is valid of course, but I believe the "Dropbox" era is here
and should be no more daunting to users than e-mail. Once they try it
and use it a few times they'll get over their reluctance.

(There are others besides Dropbox).


BitDefender has detected malware on that page.

Assuming you mean the yousendit page, I've used yousendit for many years
(not in the last year and bit though) on PC's and Macs. No issues and
it certainly does not have a rep for malware.

Transient or error at BD?

I doubt there is anything wrong at yousendit - but nobody's forced to
use it. If in doubt just SHA1 (or other) the file and send that by
separate e-mail. If the SHA1 is the same value on the other end then
not 1 bit has changed.

--
"There were, unfortunately, no great principles on which parties
were divided – politics became a mere struggle for office."
-Sir John A. Macdonald

In article , DaveS
wrote:

BitDefender has detected malware on that page.

false positive.

How do you know that?

because it's an established service that's been around for many years.
i first heard of it about 8 years ago.

web of trust rates it highly:
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/yousendit.com

it's possible that someone could send malware using the service, but
they could send it directly too. don't click on links from untrusted
sources.

their website could also be hacked, but so could the new york times. in
fact, the ny times was hacked a few years ago with a rogue ad that was
malware.

I think you don't understand how a web page gets infected.

then you think wrong.

It has nothing to do with the owners of the site, nor their reputation.

sometimes it does. not always though.

Hackers can place malware on almost any site, just waiting for you to
click the activation location.

which is why i mentioned the new york times being hacked.

a more recent one was a reputable iphone developer site.

In article , DaveS
wrote:

BitDefender has detected malware on that page.

false positive.

How do you know that?

because it's an established service that's been around for many years.
i first heard of it about 8 years ago.

web of trust rates it highly:
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/yousendit.com

it's possible that someone could send malware using the service, but
they could send it directly too. don't click on links from untrusted
sources.

their website could also be hacked, but so could the new york times. in
fact, the ny times was hacked a few years ago with a rogue ad that was
malware.

I think you don't understand how a web page gets infected.

then you think wrong.

It has nothing to do with the owners of the site, nor their reputation.

sometimes it does. not always though.

Hackers can place malware on almost any site, just waiting for you to
click the activation location.

which is why i mentioned the new york times being hacked.

a more recent one was a reputable iphone developer site.

So take a second shot at answering my question.
You blew the first chance.

i did not.

How do you know it is a false positive?

already answered.

how about you tell us what specific malware is there and what it does.

if it's not a false positive, then there will be something there for
you to identify.

it also looks like it's very common to get a false positive. there are
five threads in their forums from yesterday alone! based on reading a
couple of them, they blacklist sites rather than actually check for
anything and they respond with the same canned answer each time.

http://forum.bitdefender.com/index.php?showforum=138

Alfred Molon wrote:
In article , Jennifer Murphy
says...
I use DropBox to send large files to other people. I just create a
DropBox folder and send them a link (URL) where they can download the
files. They don;pt have to install anything on their computers or join
anything.

DropBox doesn't have anything that works as well in reverse. I can
create a shared folder, but they have to join DropBox, which installs
softeware on their computer, something many people are reluctant to do,
and then anything either of us does on that folder gets reflected on the
other computer. Many people don't like the idea of files magically
appearing on their computer or having the DropBox applet running in the
background all the time.

Is ther a file sharing service that will allow me to send a friend a
link where they can go to upload files to my account in the cloud
without having to join anything or install anything?

I'm a bit surprised nobody has pointed out the simplest solution: a
domain name + some webspace. Upload and download stuff via FTP. Download
is even possible with a browser.

Some don't know they might have free web space from their provider. Make
their home page !!

Greg

gregz wrote:
Alfred Molon wrote:
In article , Jennifer Murphy
says...
I use DropBox to send large files to other people. I just create a
DropBox folder and send them a link (URL) where they can download the
files. They don;pt have to install anything on their computers or join
anything.

DropBox doesn't have anything that works as well in reverse. I can
create a shared folder, but they have to join DropBox, which installs
softeware on their computer, something many people are reluctant to do,
and then anything either of us does on that folder gets reflected on the
other computer. Many people don't like the idea of files magically
appearing on their computer or having the DropBox applet running in the
background all the time.

Is ther a file sharing service that will allow me to send a friend a
link where they can go to upload files to my account in the cloud
without having to join anything or install anything?

I'm a bit surprised nobody has pointed out the simplest solution: a
domain name + some webspace. Upload and download stuff via FTP. Download
is even possible with a browser.

Some don't know they might have free web space from their provider. Make
their home page !!

Greg

If you don't have comcast, from the looks, others don't give you much
space. I think comcast is now 2gb. My play around page.

http://home.comcast.net/~zekor/index.htm

Greg

On Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:12:53 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

I didn't mean setting up one's own email server. I meant
setting up one's own email account. In other words, louie smith
has an email account like , but to set it up
requires that he visit the Comcast site to find his POP server
address, his SMTP server address, etc. He then has to enter
those into his email program. It takes about 5 minutes and then
one can have real email, but the majority of people find even
that much new learning to be an insurmountable task.

5 minutes for you or me, but not 5 minutes for a typical user. that's
why some isps have setup applications that set up everything for you.
even some routers have setup apps.

I was disconcerted to learn that my ISP could totally set up my router
with whatever they wanted from their end.

you should disable that capability because it means someone with less
favourable ideas can do it too.

It only happened the other day. I'll fix it as soon as I succeed in
unravelling my current network problems.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

| It only happened the other day. I'll fix it as soon as I succeed in
| unravelling my current network problems.

Are you sure it's your ISP?

Either way, you might want to consider changing
the admin password. Make it 15+ characters. Also
set it to reject all uninitiated contact. There have
been a few cases of hackable routers. There was
also a bit of a scandal about one company. I've
forgotten the details now. I think it was Linksys
and they had done something like build a "smart"
router that they can access remotely.

I use a software firewall in addition to a router.
The router seems to block most incoming traffic
that's uninitiated, and I don't use the ISP's DNS
server. Nor do I allow *anything* permission to go
out except the browsers, email, FTP, etc., and then
only via the ports they actually need. The only
case in recent years of the firewall asking whether
I wanted to accept an incoming contact was from
my ISP. I have no idea why. The attempt repeated
for an hour or so and then never happened again.
I can only guess that the ISP thought it was within
their rights to do something like a hardware survey
of their customers.

| Probably so for webmail. But the point is that people could
| have real email if they only put a little effort into it.
|
| What's real email ?
|

I'm making a distinction between free webmail and
standard SMTP email read in an email program.

Most ISPs also offer a webmail option, useful when
one is travelling, so the differences between webmail
and "real" email bleed together a bit. But what I'm
referring to is free webmail services. Those differ from
real email in two ways. One is the webpage format.
Webmail is not stored, searchable and controlled locally.
Nor is webpage format as "rich" in functionality as an
email program. And of course one has to contend with
ads. The other difference is the unique legal status of
free webmail, with providers claiming co-ownership of
content, the right to keep it after you "delete" it, the
right to share it with "partners", etc. Real email is
generally auto-deleted when you download it. It's a
paid service. Free webmail is not under your full control.

For my own website email I auto-delete email from
free webmail accounts yahoo/gmail/facebook/hotmail
because the very act of writing to such an address
opts me in to their spyware data collection. I don't
consider that "real" email.

The legal issues of ownership are an interesting tangle
that keeps changing. Basically, these companies want
full access to everything while maintaining a pretense of
civility. If you look at Google's terms you'll see they
claim you own your own "data", but then go on to say that
you give them total license to it. They then say don't worry
because we only claim license in order to provide the
service.... Oh, and also to do anything that might improve
the service.... which is pretty much anything. Likewise with
sharing, they claim to never share your data with 3rd parties
unless you explicitly opt in. ...Oh, woops, we also share it
with other companies who process it for us; and we allow
full access to any domain admin., such as a company or
school that provides your email via Google Apps....Oh, and
we share it with advertising companies, but in that case
it's "anonymized", so they need to do a bit of data crunching
to link the data to you personally. But aside from that... oh,
and the government gets access... but aside from that, it's
your data... well, except that you can never entirely delete it
.... because we need it in order to do all these things that
we just said we don't really do.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

| It only happened the other day. I'll fix it as soon as I succeed in
| unravelling my current network problems.

Are you sure it's your ISP?

Either way, you might want to consider changing
the admin password. Make it 15+ characters. Also
set it to reject all uninitiated contact.

the main thing to do is disable remote configuration. that's a really,
really bad idea to have enabled. also be sure to turn off upnp, which
is also a bad idea to have enabled.

the router password itself is not critical. make it as long as you want
but there's no need for it to be 15 characters if you disable remote
access and only allow access to it from within your lan. just don't
make it a word in a dictionary.

if wifi is in use, be sure to use wpa2 and with a good passphrase. it
should be 20+ char and not in a dictionary. do not use wep, which can
be cracked in almost no time (seconds).

another thing to do is disable ping replies from the router, which
makes it harder to detect there's a system there to hack.

There have
been a few cases of hackable routers. There was
also a bit of a scandal about one company. I've
forgotten the details now. I think it was Linksys
and they had done something like build a "smart"
router that they can access remotely.

it was linksys, who added cloud support to a couple of models and also
gathered anonymous usage data from them, but they changed it after
customer backlash.

you see, people really *do* pay attention to this stuff. they aren't
the mindless sheep you claim them to be.

In article ,
Whisky-dave wrote:

Probably so for webmail. But the point is that people could
have real email if they only put a little effort into it.

What's real email ?

he has the mistaken idea that webmail is somehow not real. he is wrong.
it's very real.

note that many isps offer both webmail and pop/imap, letting the user
choose which to use and when. it doesn't become 'fake' just because
someone used a browser.