Secure FTP transfers

[TooNice]

Moving to a new place and using a connection someone else has setup makes me more cautious than normal. Hence I am now looking into secure FTP transfer. I've tried SFTP, but it doesn't look like I can simply choose that option and expect it to work with my FTP settings. In fact, I am starting to doubt that my hosts even supports it (I was only given details for FTP logins). I was wondering if there are other possible options I can look into, or if there is no way of securely transferring files if the host only support FTP. Cheers.

[PeteSmith]

SFTP defaults to port 22, could it be a case you just need to forward the port on your router - or are you sure the host does not support sftp. It seems unusual not to support sftp.

[Peter Parker]

SFTP is pretty much just FTP tunnelled over SSH. If you have SSH access, you can probably do SFTP.

The alternative is FTPS, which is slightly different. FTPS is an enhancement to FTP that adds encryption. You'll need server support for it to work, so it depends on your hoting company/package. Or, if you have telnet access but no SSH/SFTP support, you can try finding an encryption tool to encrypt files before downloading by FTP.

Otherwise, I'm afraid you're outta luck. Best advice is to not store sensitive information on a machine you don't have full control over!

[directhex]

FTP is a backwards, retarded protocol, for the reasons listed here: http://wooledge.org:8000/FtpMustDie

FTP itself has ZERO support for anything resembling security. whether your host supports an alternative, enhanced, or tunneled replacement is a different question - one you should ask them

[Rainmaker]

SFTP defaults to port 22, could it be a case you just need to forward the port on your router

SFTP originates from an outgoing connection, so you don't need to forward any ports on the router whatsoever I wouldn't ever use FTP, SFTP is the only way to go. Hell I won't even use email if it's not over SSL and also encrypted lol

If you're using Windows, you can use SFTPDrive or just map the network drive to a drive letter and then access it that way in future for convenience. As was said above, just ask your host what the score is for SSH/SFTP access. Mine required a separate username and password to tunnel in via SFTP than for normal FTP (Debian Etch).