Introduction
Sometimes, when you’re sending large files to other people, you need to do it securely. This is especially true if the recipient isn’t technically savvy. It’s also true if you want to use your own computer and not their own. You can do either of these things by using a web-based service like Dropbox or CloudFlare.
When I was talking about this with my friend, he mentioned that he had used both services. It turned out that neither of them came close to his needs (which is why he uses a different service).
How to Send Large Files Securely
There are a lot of ways to send large files online. One of them, which can be done with some technical expertise, is the best technique for sending large files securely and unblocking sites like YouTube and Dailymotion.
First, you should know that sending large files online is not just about transferring data from one place to another, it’s about having the best way to decrypt them in the first place. You should also know that if you want to send a file from your computer, there’s nothing wrong with FTP. But when we talk about sending large files, there are two other options: SFTP (secure file transfer protocol) and SSH (Secure Shell). SSH is much more secure than FTP but it’s not as easy to use, so this method will be easier for those who are technologically amateurish or new to encryption.
You should know that SFTP does not support encryption by default. To encrypt your file before you upload it to a site like Dropbox or Box or Google Drive (or any other service where you can upload large files), you need a third-party program called TrueCrypt which will do this encryption for you (see our tutorial on how to install TrueCrypt). We recommend using Linux as both SFTP and TrueCrypt are available on Linux, MacOSX and Windows.
The next step is downloading and installing TrueCrypt on your computer: first download the latest version on our website at this link http://www.truecrypt.org/download/ , install it using the provided installer (the installer will ask you whether you want to run this on Windows or Linux) and then run the setup tool on your computer without any additional software requirements (this will ask you where to put the installed program). I strongly recommend that you run it directly from your desktop instead of opening it in an application like WinRAR or 7-Zip or anything else because these programs are known to have security flaws…
Next step is creating an encrypted folder on your computer called master . The master folder should contain all of your encrypted data; it must be unencrypted before uploading anything onto any site (and ideally kept in an encrypted folder at all times). Once everything has been encrypted properly so that only people with access through password protection can read it, we need to upload the entire file into this master folder; then we need access through password protection so that only people who know those passwords can read them; otherwise they cannot decrypt anything without knowing our password.
Conclusion
If you’re not already, please read through this post on how to send large files securely and unblock sites. It’s a great reference for all sorts of file transfers (such as photos, videos etc.). It also covers some of the back-end issues we face when sending sensitive data.