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Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

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Re: Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

#161

Post by spieglt »

mFixman wrote: post #12

I can't believe that there isn'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't there a mainstream service like that?

Check out https://github.com/claudiodangelis/qr-filetransfer for computers and phones on the same LAN.

Works great, and I'm planning on integrating that functionality into my project which transfers files between laptops using only wireless cards, no LAN required. https://github.com/spieglt/flyingcarpet

Re: Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

#162

Post by ognarb »

ufo wrote: post #32
mFixman wrote: post #12

I can't believe that there isn'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't there a mainstream service like that?

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.

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] https://userbase.kde.org/KDE_Connect/Tutorials/Useful_comman...

Re: Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

#164

Post by xioxox »

mFixman wrote: post #12

I can't believe that there isn'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't there a mainstream service like that?

SimpleSSHD is a simple ad-free open-source SSH server for your Android phone (available on Google Play). It's very useful. It only supports public-key based authentication, so you can't use a password, however.

Re: Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

#166

Post by dTal »

gdulli wrote: post #142
dTal wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android phones don't do this anymore, for the technical reason that allowing a computer to mount a filesystem directly requires that the phone unmount it. Mass storage expects a block device, so there's no wrapper that one could provide that would make this work with the native filesystems of the phone. What could be done is to dedicate a file on the phone as block storage, and expose that as a mass storage device. T…

> allowing a computer to mount a filesystem directly requires that the phone unmount it I don't think that's true. My S8 storage is mounted and accessible from my computer right now while at the same time playing music from the same storage. I can still take pictures/write to the storage.

As mass storage, or MTP? The distinction is why I qualified with "mount a filesystem directly". MTP doesn't do that.

Re: Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

#167

Post by electrograv »

_petronius wrote: post #35
mFixman wrote: post #12

I can't believe that there isn'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't there a mainstream service like that?

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

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if Google simply wants to maximize the use of their servers here (independent of what users want/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/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.

Re: Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

#168

Post by spieglt »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #146
mFixman wrote: post #12

I can't believe that there isn'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't there a mainstream service like that?

What I'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't found this and I'm thinking about writing one.

This runs the web server on a computer, but allows two-way file transfer from phones: https://github.com/claudiodangelis/qr-filetransfer

Re: Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

#169

Post by toomuchtodo »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #49

I've used Firefox Send for several months while it was still a test pilot program. It'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't have to worry about clean up.

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

Re: Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

#170

Post by kijin »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #49

I've used Firefox Send for several months while it was still a test pilot program. It'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't have to worry about clean up.

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't heard about it in a while.
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