Onionshare lets you use the Tor network to send files of any size securely, without having to upload them to a service like Dropbox or allow a third party to access your private cloud.
Η Onionshare works by creating a temporary '.onion' addressof the web on the Tor network, which you can share with a friend. When you're done, you can stop sharing, and the address will no longer work. Of course, if you care about security, be sure to encrypt the message with the .onion address that you will send to your friend.
The service requires you to install the corresponding application on computer your. This installation is very simple. Those of you who have Windows can download this installer from github and all you need to do is run it. Respectively there is an instaler for them as well Mac OS X users. Finally there are instructions for Linux users Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora. If you do not run any of the above linux distributions, the application is open source so you can always build it yourself following the relevant instructions.
The Onionshare is a simple graphical program and has a basic interface. When you open it you will be taken to the main window which has an area where you can transfer your files that you want to share as well as a button which you can click to add them. Once you've gathered everything you want to share, click the 'Start Sharing' button.
It will take a few seconds for Onionshare to generate a url. When it's all ready, a URL will appear for you to send to your friends. When you are done sharing, simply click the “Stop Sharing” button and the “.onion” link will no longer be available.
Once you have the URL of an Onionshare file, you can browse to that address using the Tor Browser. The page you will see is quite simple, and has in addition to a download link for your file and various information.
In fact, with Onionshare, you create one on your computer web server, and share as many large files as you want directly from your computer. This means that the download speed of the recipient of the files depends on your upload speed. However, compared to a traditional web server or with a simple ftp, the entire connection goes through the Tor network and so is relatively anonymous and secure.
