Guides
Written for the questions people actually arrive with — how to get a file off a phone, why email rejects it, and what "encrypted" is worth when a service prints it on the homepage.
Six ways to get a file from your phone to a computer — and where each one breaks
Cable, cloud drive, email, messaging apps, local network and transfer services compared: size ceilings, what each one costs you in privacy, and the specific situation where each method falls apart.
Email attachment size limits — and why your file is bigger than you think
The attachment ceiling for Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, Proton and Zoho, why encoding makes your file about 33% larger in transit, and the four ways past the limit.
What end-to-end encryption actually protects — and what it does not
The difference between HTTPS, encryption at rest and true end-to-end encryption, why the key matters more than the cipher, and the four things E2EE will never save you from.
Sharing files on public Wi-Fi: which risks are real and which are folklore
HTTPS killed most of the classic café Wi-Fi attacks. Here is what still works against you — rogue access points, DNS manipulation, exposed shares — and the settings that actually matter.
Why big uploads fail on phones — and how resume actually works
Mobile browsers suspend background tabs, which kills uploads. What the operating system is doing, why chunked uploads can resume and single-request uploads cannot, and how to get a large file up on the first try.
How long should a shared file stay downloadable?
A permanent share link is a permanent liability. Why expiry is a security control rather than a limitation, how long is long enough in practice, and what to do when the file has to outlive the link.
Zipping it won't help: which files actually compress and which don't
Why a zip shrinks a 40 MB spreadsheet to 3 MB but does nothing to a 40 MB video, which formats are already compressed, and what to do with the ones that are.
How to shrink a video file without making it look bad
Bitrate, resolution and codec explained in the order that matters, what a phone actually records per minute, and the settings that cut a file to a quarter with no visible loss.
MB, Mb, MiB: why your 100 Mbps connection uploads at 11 MB/s
Megabits versus megabytes, why a 1 TB drive shows as 931 GB, why upload is slower than download, and how to estimate a transfer time that turns out to be right.
How safe is a password-protected zip, really?
Legacy ZipCrypto is broken, AES-256 zip is not, your operating system probably makes the broken one, and every encrypted zip leaks the file names regardless.
You sent a file to the wrong person: what can be undone and what cannot
Recall, unsend and revoke each work in a narrow window and fail outside it. What to try first, in what order, and the steps that matter more than the recall button.
Getting files off an iPhone onto a Windows PC
Why a cable only shows you photos, what to do about HEIC and HEVC files Windows will not open, and the routes that work for documents rather than camera roll.
Android to Mac: why the cable does nothing, and what to use instead
macOS has no built-in MTP support, Google's Android File Transfer has aged out, and AirDrop and Quick Share do not talk to each other. The working routes, ranked.
What your files say about you that you did not write
GPS coordinates in photos, author names in documents, original filenames in PDFs, and why a black rectangle over text is not redaction. What each format carries and how to strip it.
Your company blocks file transfer sites. Here is what is actually happening
Web filtering, DLP and TLS inspection explained from the user side — why the block exists, why working around it is a bad idea, and the routes that are actually sanctioned.
The file arrived corrupted: how to find out what actually broke
Truncated downloads, error pages saved as zips, antivirus stripping, and text that arrives as ç instead of ç. A diagnosis order that finds the cause in under a minute.
Cloud storage or a file transfer? They solve different problems
One is a place files live, the other is a way files move. Using the wrong one produces the two most common failures: a drive full of things nobody needed, and a link that outlived its purpose.
Moving a whole photo library off a phone without losing any of it
The optimised-storage trap that silently copies thumbnails instead of originals, Live Photos that arrive as half a file, and how to verify the count before you delete anything.
Sending a file that contains other people's data
Data minimisation in practice, the hidden copies inside spreadsheets that survive deleting the source sheet, and what the 72-hour breach clock actually means.
Why one file out of two hundred refuses to copy
Forbidden characters, reserved names, the 260-character path limit, Turkish characters turning to mojibake inside zips, and the invisible difference between two identical-looking names.
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