We’ve written many posts about how to start your own website, how to create your dot com dream, etc. It has occurred to us that while you are doing that, you could also take advantage of the unlimited storage space that many hosting companies offer. If you’re worried about the security of third-party cloud storage, and you should, this is a perfect, secure solution. Here’s an example of the unlimited storage accounts we’re talking about:
$50 – $100 per year for gigabytes of storage. Not bad!
The ad infers that a hosting account is only $49 a year but that’s only for the first year. After that it’s double but still not a bad deal when you consider that you also get unlimited site hosting. By comparison, Dropbox seems more expensive, no hosting included:
$9.99 a month works out to be more than the hosting account.
Once you get the account, all you’d have to do is make a folder in the root directory, name it ‘storage’ or something similar, then use Filezilla or another free FTP client to upload your photos, videos, etc. Once you have the main folder ready, just make new folders inside of it to keep everything separate. All hosting companies offer a mini-file manager which is available through the various types of control panels but we would suggest using FTP instead.
Once you have some items in the folder, you can set up different FTP accounts which would allow you to share your material with others. You would control which folder(s) they would have access to, download limits and so on. Some hosts don’t allow you to play around with FTP accounts but all companies must give you at least one. Once you get used to FTP and using the various apps in the host’s control panel, you’ll probably wonder why you didn’t do all of this earlier.
As always, if you need help, ask us. Use the comment section below or head over and check out our Facebook page. Here is the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook Keep up to date on our posts and occasional tips and tricks.
Thanks for reading!
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Here’s a link that might help us if you are interested in hosting your own blog with Fatcow Hosting. We’ve signed up to become an affiliate and we make a bit of money if you sign up for hosting via this link: FatCow Hosting Thanks!
If you think your files on Dropbox or Microsoft’s Skydrive are private, think again. They’re not. Microsoft announced this week that nude photos, whether real or drawings, cartoons or paintings, cannot be uploaded to your Skydrive folder…even if your folder is set to Private. How would they know unless they look at everything users upload to their folder? As shocking as this may seem, you have to realize that anything you upload to the Internet can be seen by someone else.
Dropbox, one of our favorite free cloud companies, recently had a security lapse. Anyone could log in to any account without using a password. This went on for about four hours. In our estimation, cloud storage is neither safe nor private. Here’s how to take care of the private part. We’re going to walk you through a couple of options, one simple, one a bit more complicated, which you can use to keep your stuff away from prying eyes.
The concept: If you want to keep something private on your computer, you can use a password to protect the computer or you can encrypt the file or folder itself. When you put data up to the cloud, you assume that your password will keep it private. As we’ve seen with Microsoft and Dropbox, a password won’t keep anyone who works for the cloud company out of your stuff. Therefore, you are encouraged to encrypt it. Here’s an easy way to do that:
1. Download and install Notepad ++ . Get it here: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ Notepad ++ is free and much more powerful than the standard Notepad that comes with any version of Windows. Most of you should download the installer version which is highlighted in this image:
Download the Installer version unless you know what you’re doing with the others.
2. Open Notepad ++ and type a few words. For now, it doesn’t matter what you type, even one letter will do. Here’s our example. You will notice that Notepad ++ is a bit more spartan than the regular Notepad but, believe us, it is far more powerful.
Sample text file.
3. At the top, look for the word ‘Plugins’. Click on it then click on NppCrypt then choose and click on Encrypt. Three steps represented in this image:
Plugins,NppCrypt then Encrypt.
4. Make sure that you only have ONE file open, the one you want to encrypt. This is important. If you have another text file open, you might encrypt it as well as the current file. Notepad ++ will attempt to prevent this, using this menu, but mistakes can happen, right?
Do you want to encrypt all open files? No? Then close the ones you don’t want to encrypt.
5. You’ll see a faint line of open documents in the second and third photos above. Click on your open files and close them down, one by one. Then click on Yes, simply because you only have one file open and you want to encrypt it. This menu will come up:
Enter your password here. Write it down so you don’t forget it or make it very easy to remember.
6. You’re entered the password once but Notepad ++ will ask you to enter it again. This is normal with encryption, basically making sure you didn’t commit a typo the first time.
Enter the password again.
7. As you will see in this next photo, the text is not encrypted. You can’t read the words until you decrypt the file.
You can’t read the words but you can edit this encrypted file. Be careful.
TIP: The file that you have just encrypted is just like any other text file except that you can’t read it. You can delete text, add text, whatever you want. Therefore, make sure you save the file immediately and don’t make any changes in it. Why? Because you don’t know what you will be deleting if you accidentally backspace once. Sure, you can add text but it won’t be encrypted unless you re-encrypt the file again. Here is an image of a file that is partially encrypted.
We added the last part to show you what a partially Encrypted text document looks like.
As you can see, you are able to encrypt part of a text document or all of it. If you edit something that you have already encrypted, you have to re-encrypt it. We hope that makes sense. Save the file as normal, either on your computer or directly to your Skydrive or Dropbox folder. Make sure you remember the password. You can’t retrieve that password from anywhere else except your brain!
Tip: The file you have just created looks like any other text file. You cannot tell that it is encrypted until you open it. Notepad ++ will open the file but you won’t be able to read anything until you decrypt it. (Plugins, NppCrypt, decrypt then enter the password.) On the bright side, no one else can read it either!
This is step one on your journey to protect your privacy. If you don’t care about who reads your personal messages or notes, don’t worry about all of this. We feel that what we do or write or photograph is no one’s business but our’s. Employees do snoop, we guarantee it. Nothing in the cloud is private.
Next time, we’ll tell you how to create an encrypted folder that will keep prying eyes out of your cloud container. Once you put something into that encrypted folder, no one can see it without a password.
Thanks for reading!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
