These methods are more common because they are free but that are not foolproof and there is no guarantee that your product is 100% protected using those methods.
To get a better guarantee of protection involves using more sophisticated ways of providing protection for your digital downloads through scripts.
These scripts are 'programs' that run on your host server and they work with your payment processor to ensure only authenticated customers have access to your download files i.e. those who have paid!
I will mention a few of those scripts in this article but it is fair to say that if you did a search through Google you would probably find a lot more like the ones I will mention.
The scripts I will write about are those that I have personally used and can vouch for as far as their functionality. The scripts I am referring to are called (in no particular
order) -
If you do a search on Google, you will find the web sites for each of those products. Although they are not the same script and they don't work the same way they do perform the same basic functions. They hide your download files from peeping toms and they prevent unauthorized access to your download files.
How do they do this?
Well without going into the nitty gritty (because I wouldn't have a clue exactly how they do it) they do is allow you to store your download files outside of the 'web accessible' area of your web site. This means that they cannot be accessed via the web and can only be accessed via an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client like SmartFTP or WSFTP which requires password access.
That also means that the search engines cannot 'see' them and list them in their databases.
So how does your paying customer get access to the download?
Well the ONLY way they will get access is through the script itself and the scripts are designed to ensure that payment was received BEFORE they give access.
Each of the above scripts will give access via a download link that is generated by the script itself and that link changes each time a customer buys your product. Added to that function is that each of the above scripts gives you the option of expiring the generated download link.
That way your customer has a certain time period to download before the link won't work anymore. These expiring links prevent your customer from 'sharing' their download link with family/friends/colleagues.
Finally, the next best way to protect your downloads is to have them protected by a username and password combination in the folder they are stored in ... but that's a whole new topic for another article.
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