Access Your Files and Pictures Anywhere and Keep the Rest of the World Out

When my wife started her new job, she needed a copy of her birth certificate. I happen to be prepared for this. I have all of our important documents scanned in and stored on our encrypted server. So I logged in to my FTP and got her stuff printed out within a few minutes. Needless to say, her human resources contact was impressed with the speed at which I was able to produce the documentation. If you want access to all of your files from anywhere, I recommend FileZilla FTP Server. Ensure that you never use a default password. I also recommend turning on the autoban option to lock out IP addresses of malicious people trying to hack into your FTP service with automated password guessing attacks (although most of them use the default logins like admin, user, etc.). Fastream IQ (see below) also has a built in FTP server, but it doesnt have an autoban option, so I leave it off. If the information is sensitive, I recommend putting it on a True Crypt virtual drive which can be transferred like a file and then decrypted, or if mounted by the server will dismount if the drive is stolen. If you want access to your pictures from anywhere, FTP is not the best option, because it does not have a thumbnail view. Instead I would recommend JAlbum (old version 8.0.9) (freeware) to create an html structure for your pictures. JAlbum pages also load a bit quicker, especially if your pictures are high resoution (and you are hosting from a home server with limited upload bandwidth), since it can create a structure of browser appropriate resized pictures (full resolution pictures are still accessible.) Then you can publish this to a password protected site for your own use, using Fastream IQ Web Server (freeware.) All of this requires some fancy router work as mentioned in my post Router Tips for Advanced Network Applications.