Safer and easier way to send files around the web

A no-cost system to send large files around the World Wide Web has been launched by a computer security expert at a university in the United Kingdom.

ZendTo is a free and secure web-based method that will allow users to transport large files around the web much faster than by email, says its developer at the University of Southampton.

The system allows users to send files within and beyond their organizations from their own servers.

The advantage: It will run from any Linux or Unix server or virtualization system with no size restriction.

“This is completely free and, because you run it on your own site, you can be sure that it is completely safe and private and you retain complete control of your data, your system and your users,” said ZendTo to developer Julian Field.

ZendTo is particularly useful for organizations that operate in a customer service environment because, when it sends files, it incorporates customer service ticketing references, enabling all the references to be kept intact.

According to Field – the systems administrator and webmaster at Southampton University’s School of Electronics & Computer Science – ZendTo is his next big development since MailScanner that he began developing in 2000 and that is now the world-leading email security and anti-spam system.

It has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times and is used by some of the world’s leading organizations in 226 countries, such as the US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge University, Vodafone Europe.

Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, and the British Antartic Survey.

The technology is fast becoming the standard email solution at many Internet service provider(ISP) sites for virus protection and spam filtering.

“Ironically, the success of MailScanner and its strict security protocol means that it imposes limits on files being sent by email, which led to the development of ZendTo which has no size or type restrictions,” said Field.

He is dedicated to making it safer for individuals to communicate online and is determined to help wipe out Internet fraud.

Field has also launched ScamNailer, a software currently attracting an average of three million downloads a month.

It tackles spear phishing, a technique used by spammers and scammers to try to get an individual’s username and password to enable them to send out millions of spam messages from their email address.

Julian Field says: “These attacks are proving highly effective at stealing people’s credit card numbers, PIN(Personal Identification Number) codes and just about any other confidential personal information the thieves want. MailScanner and ScamNailer are working to wipe out these phishing attacks.”

At Southampton, although his position was not initially a research one, the large cost of getting systems covered by anti-virus software led Julian Field to develop his own.

“Some companies were quoting me $70,000 and that was back in 2000,” he added.

“It was then that I realized that if these commercial companies could come up with solutions that worked, then so could I.”

*To download, please click here.