Anonymous FTP

Anonymous FTP feature provides FTP access to visitors without requiring a username or password. For security reasons, users are only allowed to upload to one folder and download from another. This prevents abuse of the Anonymous FTP feature where hackers would try to user your account to distribute illegal files.

We strongly encourage you to keep this feature disabled unless you're going to use it. You can check the status, enable, or disable this feature by clicking on the "AnonFTP" icon in your Site Manager. You may also need to clean the "incoming" folder out regularly since hackers will upload files to test if they can use your account to distribute files, which they will find that they cannot.

If you exchange files with a client and don't want anyone to have access to these files and don't want to give your client full FTP access to your account. Onymous FTP may be right for you.

Once setup from the Command Center, anonymous FTP folders are located here:

/home/$username/$domain-anonftp

This directory will by default contain the following directories along with a welcome message which you can edit via a text editor:

/incoming
/pub

The "pub" directory is where you should put files that you want to have visitors anonymously download.

Vistors can access this directory via a browser by going to:

ftp://$domain.com/pub

Note, we do not allow clients the ability to allow users to both upload and download to the same directory. We do this for security reasons. You will need to user regular FTP access with your account name and password to move files from the incoming directory to the pub directory if you wish to have uploaded files available for download. To get an incoming directory, please request one by submittng a Help Desk Ticket.

The incoming directory would be:

ftp://$domain.com/incoming

This directory is writable from the web but NOT readable. No one coming in from the web (or from an FTP program logging in as "anonymous") can see what files are stored here.

Anonymous FTP warnings:

Responsibility: As the account owner, you are responsible for any and all files that are stored on your domain. This would include files that were uploaded by you as well as by anonymous FTP users. As the account owner, the complete content of your account is your responsibility even though files can be uploaded by anyone in the world. Any and all FTP download transfers, anonymous FTP included, will be used in the calculation of the total data transfer for your account. If this total data transfer amount exceeds the limit that is set for your plan, you will be responsible for any and all overage charges that occur. Once anonymous FTP has been enabled, it will be your responsibility to monitor the anonymous FTP activity for your account.

Disk Space
If you are going to allow people to upload files to your site, make sure you keep track of your disk space usage via your Control Panel. Do not allow your disk space usage to get too close to your maximum disk space allocation or you may experience problems accessing your site via FrontPage and/or be unable to upload or modify files. You may purchase additional disk space if necessary.

Once you enable ANON FTP, files can be accessed anonymously via FTP client or by using the following URL format:

ftp://yourdomain.com/<FILENAME>

Anonymous visitors wishing to access your site via FTP client (e.g. ws_ftp) must use the following information:

FTP hostname: yourdomain.com
userid: anonymous
password: guest

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