Options for Sharing Files & Photos Online While Maintaining Your Privacy

It’s hard to imagine that just fifteen years ago we were sharing files with one another by means of a slow, magnetic and relatively unreliable format called the floppy disk. After the demise of the floppy disk, there was a move towards flash memory such as Compact Flash, SD Cards, and USB thumb drives. All of these solutions are effective means to carry files with you, but what if you want to share files, photos, and maybe even your calendar with friends, family members, or coworkers online?

There are plenty of great online photo sharing and file sharing tools available, and not every one of the services available is appropriate for every situation. For example, if you want to share photos with your friends, family, and anyone else who might be interested in seeing them, you might want to put your photos on Flickr, but if you don’t want everyone in the world looking at your photos, you should probably consider a more secure option.

If you want to share files with others online, you can use services such as rapid share, but then just about everyone in the world will be able to access them because there’s no security at all. If you’re concerned about security and want to share confidential documents with others, you could setup something like an SFTP server, but that requires significant technical knowledge. Alternatively, you could simply email your photos and files to others, but that doesn’t work for large files, and you will still need to use encryption software such as PGP to protect your data.

There are also some professional sharing services online that you have to pay for, but can be well worth it if you need to share confidential files with co-workers or family members and don’t want the world to see them. Each of these services offers different features, so you’ll need to compare them and make sure the service you’re looking at is offering everything that you need for a reasonable price.  For example, some might give you the ability to have an online calendar, but might not allow you to share large files, so make sure the service you sign up meets your individual needs.