FileZilla® and FileZilla Secure are both free FTP solutions. If you are not familiar with FTP, it is probably because you don’t have a website. The definition on Wikipedia is this:
The File Transfer Protocol is a standard communication protocol used to transfer computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client-server model architecture using separate control and data connections between the client and the server.
Sounds great, right? Well, if you are an expert, then everything is crystal clear now 🙂 However, let’s explain it using a website as an example.
FTP Solution as File Manager
Suppose you want to set up a website. In that case, you will probably have a hosting provider to have your website stored and executed (hosted) on a server. And it doesn’t matter if you have a simple HTML website or a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress. In both cases, you might, at some point, need a tool to upload a high number of files to the server. If you only upload a couple of files, you can use the simple file manager your hosting service provides (in most cases). But for many files, a tool like FileZilla or FileZilla Secure is more comfortable and safer.
One of the cool features of these FTP tools is that if a file transfer gets interrupted for some reason, they can start from the point where the transfer stoped instead of starting from scratch. And another great feature is that these FTP tools have an integrated Server Manager, which can store as many connections as needed if you own more than just one website. This makes connecting to any of your websites a breeze. In addition, all passwords are encrypted and can only be accessed using a master password.
What’s up with FileZilla Secure?
FileZilla is a great tool. And now it is safe as well. However, that was not always the case. In the past, all the passwords for the different server connections were stored in a plain text format. For one guy, this caused a disaster. A hacker broke into his computer, stole his data, and gained access to all websites.
After the incident described above, the developer decided to make FileZilla more secure. The resulting “FileZilla Secure” stores all your data in an encrypted form. However, at the moment, “FileZilla Secure” is not available. Due to FileZilla requesting that any unauthorized use of its registered trademark cease, only the source code download is available at this time. Development may continue under a different project name/domain name. Should this project reappear, I will let you know.
By the way, the story above should also remind you, that you should always make sure to have a decent virus scanner installed.
