protecting your documents

I was reading one of Michel Fortin’s blog posts when he gave me a sudden shock. He explained how vulnerable the folders where we store our PDF downloads are on our servers. A simple solution can reduce the risk.

The post (you can read it at Mileage Emails) is interesting because it explores the challenges of getting emails delivered and opened.

But then he goes on to the subject of intellectual theft and copyright protection. His advice is crucial if you supply any information products that are delivered from your server. Whether that’s freebie PDFs (well, they not really free because the ‘payment’ you’re asking for is permission to keep in touch with your visitor, isn’t it?) or purchased e-products, you could be risking someone finding your server folder and just helping themselves.

I tested what Michel was saying and realised just how vulnerable my sites were.

Now I’m quite tech-savvy, but I wasn’t aware of this problem and - although it has nothing to do with copywriting (other than protecting the copyright of your material) - I decided to share this information because I thought there was a good chance others may not be aware of it.

I’ve taken at least one of Michel’s suggestions and adapted it to create a personalised index.htm file for my delivery folders (see an example).

A Gift For You

If this is something you were not aware of you’ll probably find this gift useful.

I’ve taken out my links and references to create a generic index.htm that you can adopt, if you wish, for your products folder. Simply add your email, website and business details and then upload it and the associated files to your server. If you are not familiar with html code pass it over to your webmaster and get them to do it for you.

This zip file is supplied ‘as-is’ - that means I am not including advice on how to change / upload the file to your server, but I hope it helps anyway.

Here it is:

Click to download the zip file and save it to your computer.

And Now… let me wish you

~ Carol Bentley