I have no affiliation with WeTransfer, I just offer it as a suggested service that I have used for several years with great success.
As far as I know they don’t check the contents of zip files sent using their service - nor would you want them to as the contents might in some cases be confidential.
They do employ security to guard against their servers being hacked, I understand.
As for “what they get out of it”, obviously they offer the free service with limited features as a trial, in the hope that users will find it useful enough to sign up for an account.
It’s not like Facebook where you are posting personal information that’s out in the open.
If you want total security then don’t use the internet at all.
Thanks for the thought Chris. I too have been using WeTransfer for years and have a pro membership. It means I can send stuff to all 20+ members of our photo club at one go. But I only use it for large / multiple files. The attachment my friend is having problems with is one page in Word that’s 16KB.
I think in this case it is reasonably obvious that they are using the free service to tempt users onto the platform in the hope that they wll upgrade to a paid-for service. It’s a common business model after all.
Clearly both you and @SuePJ are satisfied customers.
However not all “free” services are benign - ISTR controversy about Facebook trawling user’s email address books without their permission (see here for another article on app behaviour including FB, though it does at least seem to debunk the “FB turns your microphone on and listens in” claim) or the fact that gmail routinely scans stored email to better target ads and many other abuses of privacy?
Thumbs up for WeTransfer from me, brilliant for sending large documents and as yet have not had the need to exceed the free limit.
Another tool I use often is I❤pdf. I find the quality when converting from word to pdf on my word programme very poor for larger documents but excellent on I❤pdf. This programme also offers many other types of conversion and I believe up to 10 per day or week for free. I pay 40 euros a year to put large documents through.
I recently concerted a 600 page manuscript from word to pdf and the result was reading book quality.
Absolutely - Facebook/Meta are notorious for “borrowing” their users’ data. But I think WeTransfer would have more to lose than to gain from doing so, since they have a lot of business users who would drag them through the courts pretty quickly!!
Understood - I agree it’s weird that a small Word doc doesn’t go as an email attachment. But if you have a WeTransfer account why not give it a go - there is no minimum size limit!
Yes that’s a good suggestion but I think Sue needs the recipient to be able to edit the document, for which you need suitable software (e.g. Adobe Acrobat), unless it’s just a “fillable form” PDF.
I wasn’t so much thinking of Sue’s friend but @JohnBoy.
From the description so far I’m not sure WeTransfer will help Sue’s friend as from what we know so far she has managed to receive and open the attachment but is struggling with the mechanics of saving it and sending back. WeTransfer might make that more complex.
There might be an argument for using a cloud based service - but one such as 365 or (dare I say it given my comments above) Google Docs - where the model is one of collaboration without the need to “send” documents around to everyone and have them “send” them back (though the collaborative model itself falls down if Sue is sending out pro-forma documents with the intent of collating the results).
Interestingly, Meta have just announced a subscription-based FB/Instagram option for EU/EEA and Swiss residents that will allow people to opt out of data collection and ads - in response to EU pressure:
I’d be interested to know whether they retain any rights in the works you give them to transform. Most online platforms of this type have at least some form of assignment, or at the bare minimum, a royalty-free, worldwide non-exclusive licence in, and to, the work.
Yes lots of people like Dropbox - I use it myself sometimes - but I found that my clients had trouble with the interface - couldn’t figure out how to download things as opposed to just view them online, for example. Whereas WeTransfer is mostly idiot-proof!
