It&#x27;s a fantastic service and I&#x27;m glad to see it leave the experiment stage and become official. Highly recommended.

A bit of poking around leads me to prod.send.prod.cloudops.mozgcp.net so Im assumping Google CloudCloud.

I wonder which cloud service they are using to store the files.

Hypothetically, you could wrap this storage solution in a service that automatically creates new underlying links as old ones exhaust their quota or expire.

At maximum 200 downloads and an expiration of 7 days I don&#x27;t think anyone will bother to be honest.

There is end-to-end encryption, so unless they have homomorphic virus scanners I don&#x27;t see how they would do this...

I wonder if they&#x27;re running some malware scanners plus do they have to comply with DMCA takedowns? Based on what I see, the files are hosted on their servers, so they kind of have to, no?

I&#x27;ve been using send.firefox.com for months and so far the only downside was the 1 day expiration. Very glad you can now opt for 7 days.

They could also offer a realtime webrtc solution like snapdrop.net . Although i m not sure that works, it didn&#x27;t work between my phone and desktop.

Why is it a necessity to store information for 90 days? Why not 10 or 30?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;send.firefox.com&#x2F;legal" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;send.firefox.com&#x2F;legal</a>&gt; We receive IP addresses of downloaders and uploaders as part of our standard server logs. These are retained for 90 days, and for that period, may be connected to activity of a file’s download URL. Although we develop our services in ways that minimize identification, you should know that it may be possible to correlate the IP address of a Send user to the IP address of other Mozilla services with accounts; and if there is a match, this could identify the account email address.

How &quot;private&quot; is it? Do you store metadata? i.e. if I upload a file and it expires, do you also delete any trace of me, including my IP address?

I seem to remember that there was an app on android that allowed you to access your files via a webserver you could turn off and on. I used that a lot before I got nextcloud.

KDE connect works without internet access.  I haven&#x27;t used it on Windows, but it works fine for me on Ubuntu.

In the Apple ecosystem, there&#x27;s AirDrop which uses either Bluetooth or Wifi. You can quickly share files between any iOS and Mac devices very simply.

I use syncthing for all my personal file syncing. It is so useful and secure to boot!

I&#x27;ve been using it for (almost) everything and it has always work perfectly:I keep my phone&#x27;s picture in sync with my personal computers (&quot;send only&quot; so I can remove old photos when my SD card is getting full).I sync a &quot;media&quot; folder where I dump all the music and video I download with the youtube-dl CLI (a &quot;yt&quot; alias makes sure the files are stored in the right directory with some custom parameters).I sync my KeepassXC databases (work and personal), between my personal Linux laptop, my Android phone and my work MacbookPro. Databases can be merged in a single click if there&#x27;s any conflict (happens very rarely). I love the Android secure autofill service and fingerprint quick unlockI use a &quot;temp&quot; folder to drag&#x27;n drop stuff between computers so I can file it properly on the right device. On Android, I prefer to use the Syncthing &quot;sharing intent&quot; to make any file&#x2F;media available on my other devices in just a tap.I also have installed Syncthing on my Android TV, and occasionally drop HD movies that I download on my phone over P2P (I have a pretty fast connection, so it&#x27;s easier for me to choose a move from my phone, while in commute, have it download in a few seconds, and either stream it to my TV via Chromecast or open it from the synced folder through Kodi)This really is a dream setup.

Syncthing is in dire need of an iOS client. There&#x27;s an unofficial one, but it was unmaintained and didn&#x27;t sync with recent versions of Syncthing last I checked.

What about <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;syncthing.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;syncthing.net&#x2F;</a>?EDIT: I know you said without going through the internet. Syncthing can be configured to only transfer over specific networks (e.g. home LAN&#x2F;WI-FI)

&gt; I&#x27;m sure people who know more than me will give me a list of great reasons why it&#x27;s not straightforward to implement...Nah, Android phones have done this forever, it&#x27;s not technical difficulties stopping it from working. It&#x27;s The Apple Way. They don&#x27;t want you using your phone that way, or something.

this is an artificial apple restriction. other vendors allow you to do exactly this

I regularly do this to offload pictures and movies. I have even used my iPhone as a large USB drive.But, they don’t let you access to full file system for some reason.

Unrestricted access would probably mean that someone could take your phone and access your data.Instead, there are these 3 ways to share files between your phone and other machines: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;HT201301" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;HT201301</a>

Apple used to let you do this exactly with the iPod.

Tangentially related - I&#x27;ve always thought it&#x27;s dumb that I can&#x27;t just plug my iPhone in to any PC and have it show up as a removable storage device.I&#x27;m sure people who know more than me will give me a list of great reasons why it&#x27;s not straightforward to implement...But it doesn&#x27;t change the fact that I have this incredible device (iPhone X) with 256gb of blindingly fast NAND flash storage, of which I am only utilizing 30gb, yet I still have to tote around a f*ing stupid little plastic USB dongle if I want to copy some files around.

Syncthing is fantastic for this (and file transfers between computers over LAN and&#x2F;or internet), unless you happen to have an iOS phone.

I love KDE Connect, particularly the run command function. I wrote a list of some useful commands in the kde userbase wiki [0] some time ago.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;userbase.kde.org&#x2F;KDE_Connect&#x2F;Tutorials&#x2F;Useful_commands" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;userbase.kde.org&#x2F;KDE_Connect&#x2F;Tutorials&#x2F;Useful_comman...</a>

Does local wifi count? I use KDE Connect for sending files over wifi and a bunch of other things.You may also want to check Syncthing, which others have also recommended.

&gt; Plugging in a USB cable still works fine.That uses MTP which the OP already discounted as being &quot;a mess&quot;. Frankly my experience matches his and thus I actively avoid MTP whenever I can.&gt; I think the problem is if its too easy then people will be copying files off of each others phones without permission.You usually need to unlock the phone to use MTP. If an attacker has access to unlock your phone then it makes no difference if they copying the files via USB, Dropbox, email or whatever - your attacker already has the permission they need to do so.

Plugging in a USB cable still works fine. I think the problem is if its too easy then people will be copying files off of each others phones without permission.

Isn’t it because it’s limited to apple devices that it works so nicely? Even some times before recent updates they’ve made, ive had airdrop work improperly where my old MacBook Air wouldnt show up, etc etc. it would be a nightmare to get that working across android and pc devices

Agreed. And app hand-off (for the small number of apps that use it, basically only Safari for me) is fantastic as a &quot;task transfer&quot; tool as well.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if Google simply wants to maximize the use of their servers here (independent of what users want&#x2F;need):1. P2P doesn’t give Google all that juicy mineable data that they get when everything you do makes round trips through their servers.2. This would also implicitly encourage Android users to rely more on services like Google Drive&#x2F;Docs for all files, which is good for them.Edit: Apparently it is disputed that iOS has superior P2P file transfer support vs Android (see reply below), so perhaps all this is a moot point. I was assuming the truth of the parent post, and didn’t realize it was contentious; and since I’m not an Android or iOS expert, I can’t really argue that topic either way.

Just to be clear, Wifi network doesn&#x27;t need to be available. If I remember correctly, initial connection setup is done through Bluetooth, then one device invisibly sets up an adhoc wifi connection to the other to transfer. The two devices don&#x27;t have to be attached to a Wifi network. Quite spiffy.

I recently switched back to iOS after years on Android, and on this point I&#x27;ve been very impressed with Airdrop. Dead simple UI, very quick transfer speeds, uses WiFi or Bluetooth as available. It&#x27;s just a shame that it&#x27;s limited to Apple devices.

If both computers are on the same LAN, Resilio Sync shouldn&#x27;t hit the internet at all.

Resilio sync [1] is a great service I&#x27;ve used to transfer files using P2P technology. It still uses the Internet, but avoids any intervening parties.If you&#x27;re using Android, you could just use USB transfer using Android File Transfer [2]. Super easy, super fast.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.resilio.com&#x2F;individuals&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.resilio.com&#x2F;individuals&#x2F;</a>
[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.android.com&#x2F;filetransfer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.android.com&#x2F;filetransfer&#x2F;</a>

What about Dukto [0]?IMO if something doesn&#x27;t require the internet connection, it is more likely to be called &quot;software&quot;, not a &quot;service&quot;.[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.msec.it&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?page_id=11" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.msec.it&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?page_id=11</a>

You can try WebTorrent (P2P) based solutions, maybe <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;btorrent.xyz" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;btorrent.xyz</a> could help.

And on the flipside, I&#x27;ve used AndFTP to connect to my laptop from Android 2.0 through 8.1 - it supports sftp and a few other protocols.

This is my preferred method. I use SolidExplorer to start the ftp server and use an alias to access via lftp.

A number of Android File Managers these days (Amaze comes to mind) include a toggle option to turn your phone into an FTP Server. You would then just pull it up on your computer via ftp:&#x2F;&#x2F;192.168.X.X and put an optional user&#x2F;pass over it. I&#x27;ve used that for many years if I need to quickly transfer some documents or songs between devices.Not technically internet so much as intranet.

I use Syncthing, personally. It usually works pretty great, the only real issues I&#x27;ve seen are with locked down internet connections (the sort which also seem to meter or block VPNs).

&gt;without going through the internet

I just use iCloud Drive. Files on my desktop and in my documents folder get automatically synced to my phone and vice versa. It&#x27;s extremely easy and painless. I often find myself on my phone, saving a file to my iCloud desktop, and finding the file on my desktop the next time I open the lid of my laptop.

That was my assumption.Your comment took me a little by surprise actually because there&#x27;s no actual need for the internet in SSH and in fact I probably do 90% of my SSHing on local networks. But I guess your usage differs significantly?

That&#x27;s the usual arrangement, yes: phone - WiFi AP - ethernet switch - desktop; no internet needed. SSH is not some only-works-in-the-cloud magic, just a TCP&#x2F;IP service; as long as you can access the server, it is cloud-agnostic.I do use this arrangement with split DNS: inside the local LAN, the desktop&#x27;s DNS resolves to the desktop directly; outside, it resolves to the gateway&#x27;s external port, whence it&#x27;s NATed to the desktop. SSH from anywhere :)

I&#x27;m a bit confused, in what sense is accessing an SSH server not going through the internet? Was the phone connected to the same LAN as the desktop via Wifi?

It does - just so long as you and anyone else you might want to share with are paid up into the Apple walled garden.I do have an iPhone and I love AirDrop for sharing photos with the few friends who also have an iPhone but it&#x27;s not even an option for me with a Linux laptop.

You didn&#x27;t say whether you are on iOS or Android, but if you are on iOS airdrop works very well.

&gt; copy text, images, photos, and videos on one Apple device and then paste the content on another Apple deviceSo not so much for my Linux box or my Android phone, then. As usual with Apple&#x27;s shiny crap it &quot;all just works&quot; as long as you&#x27;re only playing inside the walled tarpit.

Does that transfer the data over iCloud (via the internet), or over Bluetooth and local WiFi? The page is kind of ambiguous since it mentions all 3.

Besides AirDrop there is &quot;Copy and Paste across devices&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;kb&#x2F;ph25168?locale=en_US" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;kb&#x2F;ph25168?locale=en_US</a>

On iOS having a file manager web server is a common workaround, some apps like VLC even have their own. The only issue is that the server stops if you switch apps. There&#x27;s also iMazing which uses the iTunes protocol and is pretty good, but unfortunately is paid.

termux + woofwoof -i &lt;ip_address&gt; -p &lt;port&gt; &lt;filename&gt;termux: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.termux&amp;hl=.." rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.termux&amp;hl=...</a>.woof: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.home.unix-ag.org&#x2F;simon&#x2F;woof.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.home.unix-ag.org&#x2F;simon&#x2F;woof.html</a>Edit:1. Allows directory upload&#x2F;download (tar&#x2F;gzip&#x2F;bzip2 compressed)2. Local file server (doesn&#x27;t go over the internet)3. Allows upload form (-U option)4. Allows file to be served &lt;count&gt; number of times (-c option)

You might be interested in KDE Connect, which provides (among other things) essentially a thin wrapper around SSHFS. It&#x27;s the most convenient method of computer&lt;-&gt;phone transfer I&#x27;ve found.

AirDroid is pretty handy on Android; file transfer, browsing your phone&#x27;s files&#x2F;images, sending SMS from your desktop browser (although Messages now does that native) etc. Much to my surprise, there&#x27;s also an iOS version - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;id1194539178" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;app&#x2F;id1194539178</a>

I&#x27;ve been using this, but I just switched to the Sway for my WM and I&#x27;m unsure of how to use KDEConnect with Sway. Any ideas?

&gt;I can&#x27;t believe that there isn&#x27;t a simple service to transfer data between my cellphone and my computer without going through the internet.KDE Connect, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.kde.org&#x2F;KDEConnect#What_is_KDE_Connect.3F" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.kde.org&#x2F;KDEConnect#What_is_KDE_Connect.3F</a> i&#x27;ve been using it for years

When pushing files from phone to computer, I setup my Pixel to use AndFTP. The ubiquitous &quot;Share&quot; button offers AndFTP as an option and lists preconfigured destination SSH servers. I upload photos this way to a distinct account (which gets scooped up later by a more privileged script).What I&#x27;m really looking for is a Share button enabled app that can POST arbitrary files to a customizable URL.

How about <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;snapdrop.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;snapdrop.net&#x2F;</a> ?

Try resilio sync, uses lan or Internet depending on what is available. Sync the images folder with your computer with a few clicks.

This runs the web server on a computer, but allows two-way file transfer from phones: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;claudiodangelis&#x2F;qr-filetransfer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;claudiodangelis&#x2F;qr-filetransfer</a>

What I&#x27;d like to see is an app that runs a webserver on my phone to share a slideshow of pictures or videos to a browser on the lan. I haven&#x27;t found this and I&#x27;m thinking about writing one.

There is. It&#x27;s called dukto (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.msec.it&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?page_id=11" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.msec.it&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?page_id=11</a>), and works on mac, linux, windows and android. It will use zeroconf to automatically find all duktos on the local network, and let you send stuff to them in a blink.Proprietary but free as in beer.

There are plenty of cross-platform local file transfer tools available but they all require manual setup and some knowledge of networking. If &quot;without going through the internet&quot; is a requirement, I don&#x27;t think an easier and secure tool could be made better than what&#x27;s already available.

If you use GNOME, GSConnect is magical.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;andyholmes&#x2F;gnome-shell-extension-gsconnect&#x2F;wiki" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;andyholmes&#x2F;gnome-shell-extension-gsconnec...</a>

Check out <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;claudiodangelis&#x2F;qr-filetransfer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;claudiodangelis&#x2F;qr-filetransfer</a> for computers and phones on the same LAN.Works great, and I&#x27;m planning on integrating that functionality into my project which transfers files between laptops using only wireless cards, no LAN required. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;spieglt&#x2F;flyingcarpet" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;spieglt&#x2F;flyingcarpet</a>

&gt; It only supports public-key based authentication, so you can&#x27;t use a password, however.If there&#x27;s any chance of this thing being exposed to a public network (like, say, a cell network), I&#x27;d say that&#x27;s a very good thing!

SimpleSSHD is a simple ad-free open-source SSH server for your Android phone (available on Google Play). It&#x27;s very useful. It only supports public-key based authentication, so you can&#x27;t use a password, however.

I often first try MTP and when it is acting up again, I&#x27;m using adb pull &#x2F; adb push to do it. Once set up, adb turns on automatically and all you need to do is to invoke the commands on the computer. If USB is unavailable, adb works via the network as well, provided the phone&#x27;s IP is reachable. However, you need to know the ip address. The only problem really is figuring out the paths, but at least it works and overall I&#x27;m wasting less time than with MTP usage.

You can literally do that; termux will run sshd quite happily. I&#x27;m pretty sure there are sftp servers in the app store as well, but I don&#x27;t really trust them.I run the reverse; my laptop runs sshd and then I ssh&#x2F;scp&#x2F;rsync from termux on my phone. But either way works.

With macOS and iOS, Airdrop, as others have stated. For other platform combinations, there is NitroShare[1] which works in almost the same way.[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitroshare.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitroshare.net</a>

Just make sure your Mac&#x27;s firewall is not blocking bluetooth.

If you use Apple devices, it&#x27;s called AirDrop and works surprisingly well. I use it a lot, between computers, phones, and ipads, within the family and sometimes with other people, too.

SMB over local network would be my default, I recall an app for using SMB with Android back as far as the 2.x days.We have tons of protocols for transferring files over networks, there&#x27;s no reason for them to go to the public Internet, nor for them to be mobile phone specific.

It&#x27;s because the whole app ecosystem is proprietary and the open source packages aren&#x27;t as polished. I remember when it was a huge pain to use Bonjour.It seems like this should be a solved problem but maybe it takes a Mozilla or some other larger entity to push the marketing and the customer support and development to really solve the problem of transferring large files securely.

To add to the options (for Android phones):<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;f-droid.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;packages&#x2F;org.primftpd&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;f-droid.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;packages&#x2F;org.primftpd&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m on Android, and Syncthing is pretty seamless once configured. I just configure my cellphone, my laptop and my desktop to sync a specific directory in both directions.It&#x27;s decentralized, end-to-end encrypted and does local discovery of devices on a LAN so it will also works offline.As long as one device lives and is synced, I have a copy of the files.

You missed the &quot;without going through the internet&quot; part.

Dozens of responses, and not one mention of Dropbox. Works perfectly for this exact purpose on Android.

There are a few around...I use File Explorer which can actually start an FTP server from my phone (iPhone) that my PC can connect to over LAN.  It also can be a client to a remote FTP&#x2F;file share.

there is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;snapdrop.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;snapdrop.net&#x2F;</a> but it didnt work for me

You run a simple HTTP server on your computer, then download your files over Wi-Fi using your phone&#x27;s browser. Works nicely.<pre><code> cd my&#x2F;directory &amp;&amp; python3 -m http.server 80</code></pre>

&quot;I can&#x27;t believe that there isn&#x27;t a simple service to transfer data between my cellphone and my computer without going through the internet.&quot;The correct way to do this is to configure your phone to emulate USB mass storage and then connect with a USB cable.Your phone looks like a thumb drive. It&#x27;s the easiest workflow in the world.Unfortunately, this workflow is off limits because of some licensing requirement from MS for fat32 (or something) which is why neither android nor ios has this very basic, simple feature.

I can&#x27;t believe that there isn&#x27;t a simple service to transfer data between my cellphone and my computer without going through the internet. iTunes is terribly bloated, MTP is a mess, and Bluetooth is slow and frustrating.Back in my hacker day I used to have an SSH server open on my cellphone and use it to transfer files back and forth with my computer. Why isn&#x27;t there a mainstream service like that?

With HEVC 2.5GB is perfectly fine for a 2 hour movie.

Depends on the runtime. For low quality Netflix dumps (from Netflix, not because it got reencoded) it&#x27;s usually enough, even for 1080p.One can always split files.

winrar and 7-zip can break up files into chunks of any size you specify.

2.5GB file limit is a bit small for good quality TV shows (and especially movies).

We are working on a plugin for BitTorrent that will automatically re-upload a file to Firefox Send when the old link expires and then make the new link available in the torrent.

The files are available up until they have been downloaded (from 1 to 100 times) or until a certain timeframe has elapsed (from 5 minutes to 7 days). See the screenshot at the article.

Neat!How do they handle abuse though? Like, people using it to host, say, pirated TV shows? Maybe a max download limit that makes it impractical for that use case?

There&#x27;s also a command line interface somewhere

One really big advantage of Send over attachments is that you don&#x27;t have seemingly immortal copies of the files hanging around in people&#x27;s mail clients and&#x2F;or IMAP servers.

Based on what I&#x27;ve read, the security model seems to be almost the same as email attachments?

I&#x27;ve used this before to send sensitive documents to my attorney, who would have otherwise just wanted email attachments. It worked great.

this doesn&#x27;t seem that impressive technology wise, but maybe i&#x27;ll remember to use it.

I think Syncthing has a good model for this sort of thing. Anyone can stand up a rendezvous (and&#x2F;or relay if you want) server which joins the network and starts helping people traverse NAT.

But that would require more brain and effort. Since many users are usually behind a NAT, some NAT-traversal is neccessary. Combined with a robust detection (for shitty networks) and fallback to &quot;normal&quot; servers ... you get the idea.

This is the tool I wanted to write! This is honestly the best solution I can imagine. It&#x27;s FAXing for the 21st century

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;file.pizza&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;file.pizza&#x2F;</a>

I must say I am disapointed.I thought this would be some cool realtime system to send from browser to browser, using WebRTC or something. Something that doesn&#x27;t involve them paying for file servers, by the way.I believed in Mozilla ! But no, here we are and I just don&#x27;t see the difference between this and Mega.EDIT: except for the auto-deletion trick that addresses the piracy problem. But still...

Reminded me of zerobin &#x2F; privatebin. We used this internally at a previous company to share passwords and sensitive files.Data is encrypted at client and a url with a key is generated.Can be used &#x27;burn after reading or with some specific lifetime.

As far as I can see, this requires S3 or a S3 compatible service. Kind of defeats the purpose of self hosting unless you can set one yourself (it may be, I didn&#x27;t look).EDIT: Apparently there&#x27;s a way to use filesystem instead of S3, it&#x27;s just not well documented.

boop: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send</a>

It looks like Mozilla publishes a container and has instructions:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs&#x2F;docker.md" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs&#x2F;docker.md</a>

Anybody have a nice docker version to run this at home?

Is the source available for this? A self-hosted version of this would be nice...(Update: Yep, just found it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send</a>, just before the comment below was posted :))

You can use wetransfer without email too I think. my designer sends me that way. Probably signed up users can do so.

True, without the email. Actually, I like we transfer for sending emails and notifications when the user has downloaded the attachments.

No, he&#x27;s saying Magic Wormhole doesn&#x27;t exactly need the needs of a non-technical person.

&quot;It&quot; in the first sentence does refer to the solution they mention, not Firefox Send.

magic-wormhole works fine on windows and mac; nothing about sh-like shells is linux-specific.

I have no clue why you would suggest a tool that requires using a linux command line after telling firefox send doesn’t meet the needs of non-techical person.

I remember elementaryOS had a GUI for this in its app store. Never got around to try it, Linux is not well known in the consumer world, let alone Elementary

I typoed. I meant `pipx`, not `pipe`. My phone tried to help.`pipx` is a convenience utility for installing cli python tools in separate virtual environments and then being able to update them nicely: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;pipxproject&#x2F;pipx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;pipxproject&#x2F;pipx</a>So i meant`pip install --user pipx &amp;&amp; pipx install magic-wormhole`

&gt;pip install --user pipe &amp;&amp; pipe install magic-wormholeWhat am I looking at here? On PyPI &#x27;pipe&#x27; is listed as a &quot;Module enablig a sh like infix syntax (using pipes)&quot;, and magic-wormhole&#x27;s own docs just say to install with pip like anything else.

It doesn&#x27;t exactly meet the needs of &quot;sending files to a non-technical person&quot;, but Magic Wormhole [0] has been truly great for flipping files around between me and anyone who is capable of being trusted to run `pip install --user pipe &amp;&amp; pipe install magic-wormhole`. This is by no means everyone, but it&#x27;s been very useful quite often.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;</a> has

Storage is extremely cheap. Especially for a service like Send which doesn&#x27;t hold any data for a long period of time.Elseways, It might be that they have bigger plans with it. This might be just a product to learn about market potentials.Mozilla&#x27;s manifesto is all about the Internet and Internet privacy. File sharing is one of the areas where the internet is losing privacy.

A million things, like missing functionalities from the new extensions api (meaning no Pentadactyl), no good way to manage keyboard shortcuts, having to disable many google integrations after installation, no way to disable &quot;do not track&quot; if using built-in tracker blocking, no sidebars a la Vivaldi, buggy rendering (e.g. transitions animating elements using css transforms), unexplained slowdowns, lack of proper tab isolation (one slow&#x2F;crashed tab takes the whole browser with it), etc. I could rant all day.

Is there anything specific you are missing in Firefox today? Or is it purely the fact that it&#x27;s broken since version 61? Did you submit a bugzilla issue, or know the existing number? I&#x27;d be happy to check it out.

I wish Mozilla focused on core Firefox functionalities instead of coming up with so many small side projects that don&#x27;t target their typical audience. Since Chromium-based browsers are not an option, many of us are stuck with Firefox as the only remaining choice. But even Firefox has to be heavily customized before it&#x27;s completely deGoogled and stops contacting various motherships.As a side note Nightly build for Ubuntu has been broken since version 61 and there&#x27;s no sign of any effort to fix it.

&gt; How do they pay for the storage costs?Using their revenue from search, like everything else they pay for.&gt; What&#x27;s the upside for Mozilla?&quot;Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.&quot;

Upside is that this is another reason to get a Mozilla account.

How do they pay for the storage costs? What&#x27;s the upside for Mozilla?

No one I&#x27;ve tried it with has ever had it fail on them.But to answer your question, I uploaded a 100mb+ file to FireFox Send, copied the link, RDPd into another computer, kicked off the download, and then cancelled it midway through download. The link did expire after that.So I guess they don&#x27;t have an easy way of telling whether the download is successful or not. Maybe Mozilla&#x27;s engineers can figure something out if the issue is raised.

If you are worried about it you can specify the number of downloads before expiration

Does the link expire after a successful transfer? Curious what happens if the transfer fails mid transfer and needs a retry.

To my knowledge, the link is only invalidated if the person actually downloads the file. Simply viewing the link does not invalidate it. I can recall a couple of times emailing a Send link to my brother, then checking it in the morning to see if he had grabbed him or not. It was still viewable, so I deduced that he hadn&#x27;t grabbed it yet, sent him a follow-up e-mail (&quot;Hey you lazy bastard, grab the damn file before it automatically expires!&quot;), and checked again a few hours later to find it gone.

Do you ever run into a problem when an overzealous email service or virus scanner pre-fetches the link and invalidates it before an actual person clicks on it? This used to happen with all sorts of links in emails, though I haven&#x27;t heard about it in a while.

I&#x27;ve used Firefox Send for several months while it was still a test pilot program. It&#x27;s been very useful for quickly sending files to family. The fact that the link expires as soon as the other party downloads it means I don&#x27;t have to worry about clean up.

Thanks for sharing your solution! Not sure what is causing it (maybe it&#x27;s OpenSSL binding related), and am currently not really targeting FreeBSD yet.I wasn&#x27;t fully ready with this tool for the Firefox Send release to be honest, would have loved to be able to provide better binaries and packages for more platforms, which are a work in progress.If you believe you can improve the README with your solution, be sure to submit a [PR](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;timvisee&#x2F;ffsend&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;timvisee&#x2F;ffsend&#x2F;</a>).Happy to see it&#x27;s working! :)

I just had the same issue with rust linking to a 1553 bus library in &#x2F;usr&#x2F;local&#x2F;lib yesterday. Seems like this should be on the search path.

FWIW, I built and successfully ran it on FreeBSD-current. The only hiccup I ran into was that it puked building due to not having &#x2F;usr&#x2F;local&#x2F;lib in its lib search path &amp; not being able to find libxcb. I had to manually add -L&#x2F;usr&#x2F;local&#x2F;lib to the cc args and manually link it. Not sure if that is a FreeBSD issue w&#x2F;Rust, or something in your package.At any rate, the tool works! Thanks so much.

Cool. Sadly, I don&#x27;t think the client supports the current Firefox Send version though. Method of encryption has been changed during the last few months.

Python cli version at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ehuggett&#x2F;send-cli" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ehuggett&#x2F;send-cli</a>disclaimer: I haven&#x27;t used either cli version.

Nope, you don&#x27;t need Firefox to use the site anyway.

No, see the requirements here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;timvisee&#x2F;ffsend#requirements" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;timvisee&#x2F;ffsend#requirements</a>Along with ffsend, you can use any browser to upload&#x2F;download files through <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;send.firefox.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;send.firefox.com&#x2F;</a> as well.

do I need install firefox to use this tool? looks neat!

Thanks a lot. The first thought after seeing this was that I wish it had a CLI and I know I am lazy enough to never write one.

You don&#x27;t have to ask for permission to fork open source projects.You are free to port the project to JS as long as you follow the applicable licenses: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;timvisee&#x2F;ffsend&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;LICENSE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;timvisee&#x2F;ffsend&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;LICENSE</a>

This is great, thanks :)Mind if I port this to JS?

Love the demonstration on the Github page!

This is such a fantastic tool to have, thank you so much!

I&#x27;ve been building a fully featured CLI tool for Firefox Send, supporting this new release.For anyone that is interested: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;timvisee&#x2F;ffsend" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;timvisee&#x2F;ffsend</a>

WebRTC and privacy don&#x27;t exactly go together well.

I had the expectation that it would use WebRTC before opening the link, disappointed on that side. But really glad of the privacy minded offer. I appreciate Mozilla&#x27;s work and effort towards a more private and encrypted internet!

With the caveat about client side browser encryption in general, which I&#x27;m sure someone will pop in here and explain in detail. :)

Client side JavaScript that encrypts locally befor uploading and puts the encryption key in the url you share with someone that never gets sent to Mozilla. Also client side decryption on the person you shared the link with. It’s end to end.

That&#x27;s why the key is in the hash part of the URL; the server can&#x27;t access that (unless it also sends client Javascript that parses it and sends it back to the server, but that could be detected).

&gt; The url effectively contains the decryption key, so the web server could be set to capture the urls and decrypt files.If that&#x27;s the case, I think setting a passphrase should be mandatory. Proxy servers are extremely common at every workplace. Since they probably log all requests, they will capture all keys in the URL.

The url effectively contains the decryption key, so the web server could be set to capture the urls and decrypt files.If you want, you can also set a passphrase on the file to share via another channel

IIRC The link contains an anchor `#abc123` which is the decryption key. Browsers do not send anchor parts of the URL to the server, and so the browser decrypts.Hinges on the browsers never sending that key, though.

How is this using end-to-end encryption? It seems like the recipient just clicks a link to download. How can it have been encrypted for that person? end-to-end encryption normally means that there&#x27;s no way for the intermediary to unencrypt the data but I can&#x27;t see how that&#x27;s possible in this case.

There&#x27;s also a <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd949.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd949.com&#x2F;</a>

Obligatory <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;949&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;949&#x2F;</a>

what is the business case for this tho? Who pays for the bandwidth??

Yes, next to Apple&#x27;s AirDrop, this is a welcome addition.

Maybe they just don’t need too much storage since they expire quickly. This would be an interesting thing to graph, if they release the statistics.

Net income 2017: 89 million.
Not that much for a company employing more than a thousand employees. But impressive for a corporation that is 100% owned by (and allegedly managed like) a non-profit org.

Mozilla has quite a bit of money, most of it from their default search engine deals. I&#x27;d wager to guess that most of it goes to wages.

I&#x27;m onboard as a regular user of send.firefox.com.  How does Mozilla have the money to offer this for free?

I&#x27;ve tested this and the link seems to expire the moment the user starts a download.

I wonder if they&#x27;ve fixed the issue where one can force reuse of a link by slowing down a download, and sharing the URL ? Hence turning it into a cheap file hosting service:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15450524" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15450524</a>I haven&#x27;t been able to upload a file to try.

They key is appended to the URL as a hash, which cannot be read by the server.

How does E2EE work if the recipient can download the file directly? I&#x27;d expect some key or password needs to be exchanged too?

I&#x27;m not so sure about that. I have a difficult time believing that anyone in the &quot;mainstream audience&quot; would take the time to read Mozilla&#x27;s blog posts, or more generally the blog posts of any tech company.

It&#x27;s because this blog is for mainstream audiences who don&#x27;t know what GitHub is and might be scared of all that code-y stuff if they accidentally clicked on it.

I really don&#x27;t understand why they didn&#x27;t share a link to the repository in the article. For anyone who&#x27;s interested - here it is: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send</a>

I think what the previous poster meant was &#x27;why&#x27; are Mozilla paying for it?

Presumably Mozilla, just like they do for the sync and Web Push servers.

Which is why you don’t host it on AWS. Wrong tool for the job.

I don&#x27;t understand how they can afford the bandwidth...If this were on AWS it would be around $0.09 per GB for downloads.

If they can&#x27;t keep up, at least we&#x27;ll always have the code: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send</a>

I believe that most of Mozilla&#x27;s revenue comes from Google profit-sharing, because they make it the default search engine.

First off, Mozilla believes in the service. Mozilla itself gets funding from donations and corporate backing (I think). The cost of bandwidth is small compared to other file share sites in that the files stored are temporary. The transient nature of the files means that the max storage space needed is relative to the concurrent number of users. Bandwidth also. That means sans a very clever DDoS their expenses should be manageable compared to say Google Drive, Dropbox, or MS One Drive.I remember sending a signed PDF via Firefox Send and was at first horrified when I realized I couldn&#x27;t get the file back after 24 hours but then relieved knowing that the recipient got it and then it disappeared from the internet. Very cool!

One of their KPIs is: &quot;Percent of users who have or create an FxAccount via Send, Why: representation of % of any service users who might be amenable to an upsell&quot;From this it seems that their moneymaker is the new Firefox account creations that will be driven by this service, to whom they can then upsell. But it doesn&#x27;t state what they are trying to upsell. Anyone got any idea what that might be?

Read here for the why: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs&#x2F;metrics.md" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs&#x2F;metrics.md</a>

We&#x27;ll find out by the end of the year »Secondary - In support of Revenue KPIWe believe that a privacy respecting service accessible beyond the reach of Firefox will provide a valuable platform to research, communicate with, and market to conscious choosers we have traditionally found hard to reach.We will know this to be true when we can conduct six research tasks (surveys, A&#x2F;B tests, fake doors, etc) in support of premium services KPIs in the first six months after launch.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs&#x2F;metrics.md" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs&#x2F;metrics.md</a>

Very clean and nice, but how is this financed?That is, who&#x27;s paying for the server storage and the bandwidth?

The file is decrypted in client-side JavaScript so presumably no

Is there a simple way to get the direct URL of the file (e.g. to use in wget cli calls).

Yeah; ID length was definitely another challenge. Time-expiration helped, but. I was going with 6 digits as a middle ground but it wasn&#x27;t super secure, even if an upload expired after a few minutes. And of course there was no way for the user to know for sure that I couldn&#x27;t keep around a copy without the E2E.

Theoretically, yes. But they could also derive keys from a shorter password value -- like password managers.

The end to end encryption necessitates a hard to remember uri anyway, so I don&#x27;t think you can have both &quot;secure&quot; and &quot;memorable&quot;.

The hope was for the time limit to help improve those odds, but, yes. It was also not really intended for anything truly sensitive.The motivating case was when you&#x27;re in physical proximity to the destination device, but don&#x27;t have any account linkage between the two (not even messaging&#x2F;email&#x2F;social accounts that are connected). The original idea came from university computer labs: transferring homework between the lab computer and a personal one was a pain. I had to sign into dropbox in the browser (and 2FA), or attach it to an email, or carry around a flash drive (which wouldn&#x27;t work on phones), or whatnot. Just to move the file three feet. A glanceable code with no sign-in bridged that gap.Other use-cases include people you don&#x27;t know very well (and therefore don&#x27;t have an email, phone number, etc.). We demonstrated the prototype to a crowd by uploading a file with the code visible on the projector, and suddenly everyone in the crowd had the file. That was pretty cool.

A short PIN seems nice for personal use (maybe on a self-hosted service) but wouldn&#x27;t a short PIN allow people to potentially guess random PINs and download files that they shouldn&#x27;t have access to?

Encrypting it with a random key that doesn&#x27;t get sent to the server, but is in the URI that the user sends to the receiver means that only the sender and receiver know what the file actually contains. Means neither you nor law enforcement can know what you are storing unless the URI is captured.

If you&#x27;re still interested in this type of tool, I&#x27;m sure Mozilla would welcome your contribution: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;send</a>

Funding it wasn&#x27;t a problem. It took a weekend to build and was dirt-cheap to host. If people started using it enough to increase the server costs I would&#x27;ve stuck an ad at the bottom.Honestly half of why I took it down is nobody was really using it. I didn&#x27;t work terribly hard to market it, as I had no aspirations of getting rich and it would&#x27;ve been tenuous to monetize at all. I just told friends about it, etc.I didn&#x27;t imply there was a &quot;hard part&quot; to it. Just a neat idea. No need to dump on it.

You came up with a web service that lets anyone upload something and then download it via &#x2F;uploads&#x2F;123?That&#x27;s basically a hello world project. As you found out, the hard part is everything else, like funding it.

Hah, found a record of the project (we did it at HackTX):
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techzette.com&#x2F;2013-hacktx-winners-and-finalists&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techzette.com&#x2F;2013-hacktx-winners-and-finalists&#x2F;</a>It was called &quot;Catch&quot;

Ah man, I literally came up with (and prototyped) this exact thing in 2013. Minus the end to end encryption. I dropped it mostly because I wasn&#x27;t sure how to prevent illegal use and didn&#x27;t want to be liable.Edit: mine was actually (partially) better because it assigned a short PIN instead of a full link, which meant you could just look at it and remember it for typing-in, instead of requiring a separate channel to &quot;send&quot; the link.

I&#x27;m surprised that no one raised their concern about javascript encryption. Usually, some will point out that the user will have to trust the delivered client side code first. Has javascript encryption finally got mainstream now?

Sure, but doesn&#x27;t help with the PR does it. If people start using it to send&#x2F;dist the stuff, the news will mention it.

Since it&#x27;s encrypted end to end, presumably they will be oblivious to all that stuff?

The same way backup services and email servers deal with encrypted data.  They have no way of knowing.

How are they going to deal with bad content? Child porn? Pirated content? Illegal stuff?

This is perfect! I&#x27;m currently taking a networking class where we generate trace reports, and I&#x27;ve just realised how tricky it is to send files without logging in (I&#x27;m just averse into doing that in a machine that&#x27;s not mine). I can email my trace files, but I need to login, I can store in dropbox&#x2F;drive, but again I&#x27;ll have to login.I wish they added a QR code option as well. It would be perfect for quickly copying the link by snapping it with my phone so I can download later.

Backend is written in JS. I can understand why they chose Node, but why not Typescript? This needs to be maintained and TS &gt;&gt;&gt; JS.

Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service