Free, Secure, and Open-Source: How FileZilla is Making an Old School Protocol Cool Again

It's a free and open-source, cross-platform FTP application that allows secure file transfering - and it's making an old-school protocol cool again, according to a recent blog post. Started about 21 years ago - and downloaded by millions each year - FileZilla remains "committed to their role in liberating technology, by making it accessible, open and also secure," according to the blog post. But it also explains how FileZilla has beefed up that security through a collaboration with the internet freedom nonprofit, the Open Technology Fund (or "OTF"):Over the past year, FileZilla has utilised support from OTF to undertake two activities that enhanced and ensured the security of their tools. The first was integrating FileZilla Server with Let's Encrypt, a free, automated, and open source certificate authority that ensures secure communication between the two end-points sending or receiving a file via FileZilla.... Secondly, FileZilla ran a penetration test, a service offered by OTF's Red Team Lab. A team of independent researchers attempted to force access to the FileZilla server to see if they could gain control. These researchers were highly skilled, and the testing was extensive. The team conducting the test only found very minor security vulnerabilities that FileZilla were able to fix immediately. As a result of this process, anyone wanting to use the FileZilla software can trust that it has been cross-scrutinised by a third party and found to be secure.... FileZilla respects users' confidentiality: they do not track your behaviour, nor sell your data to other companies. While they do have advertisements on their website, they are posted exactly as advertisements would be posted in a newspaper. Nobody knows that you are reading the advertisements, or that you decided to call or connect to the advertised website. The advertisement has simply been attached to the webpage, without any underlying tracking.... . "Our mission hasn't changed in over 20 years: design, develop, maintain and enhance free tools to securely transfer files with ease and reliability," said Tim Kosse, FileZilla Lead Developer. This decision was a political one taken by FileZilla, to always preserve the freedom of their tools, and of their users. "We aren't the typical commercial open-source venture that starts doing things for free, and over time, closes this and that to make money" said Roberto Galoppini, FileZilla Director of Strategy. "While you might not see FileZilla listed at the NYSE [New York Stock Exchange] any time soon, the freedom of our tools will never be questioned...." [I]f you work in an industry that requires the secure transfer of sensitive files, or if you simply have personal photographs or videos you want to keep confidential, using proprietary platforms to share or store them can put your information at risk of being exposed.... FileZilla offers an alternative that is secure and private. Their tools are developed by a team that is deeply invested in protecting users' confidentiality, and liberating technology is central to their work and decision-making.... At the same time, projects like FileZilla remind us that there exists a global community of technologists, activists, coders, bloggers, journalists, software developers, and mindful internet users making internet freedom a lived reality and daily practice. Supporting, experimenting with and using free and open source tools, such as the FileZilla client and server, enables us to disinvest from the capitalist pursuit of corporate control of technology and unchecked surveillance of our data. Rather, we can step into alignment with an alternative, parallel narrative being created by a community of resistance that is grounded in principles of cooperation, solidarity, commons and openness.

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