Why Unencrypted FTP Should No Longer Be Used

Planned shutdown of unencrypted FTP (Shared Hosting & Managed Server)

Up to now, we have continued to allow unencrypted connections with the standard FTP protocol in addition to encrypted ones in our Shared Hosting and Managed Server products for older SFTP accounts. For security reasons, we will tentatively only allow unencrypted access until 2024-08-31. After this date, only encrypted connections using the SFTP protocol will be possible.

Customers for whom we still have unencrypted FTP connections registered were informed by us on 12/09/2023 via email about the planned shutdown. If you are affected, you can also view this email in the notifications of your IONOS account. The email contains an overview of the affected SFTP accounts. This allows you to check which of your software or web applications is still configured for unencrypted access.

To switch from an unencrypted to an encrypted connection via SFTP, you need to change the protocol from FTP to SFTP and the port from 21 to 22 in the settings of your software. If your software does not support SFTP, we recommend the free program FileZilla. How to use FileZilla with SFTP is described in the article Transferring files with FileZilla and SFTP.

Despite its age, the file transfer protocol FTP is still relevant for exchanging files between your computer/mobile device and webspace in the hosting sector. In this article, we will show you how to use FTP securely.

The problem with unencrypted FTP

The FTP protocol was introduced back in 1985 and no longer meets today's security standards. The reason for this is that all data, including passwords, are transmitted unencrypted. There is therefore a risk that sensitive data can be read by third parties during transmission and possibly misused.

SFTP and FTPS are secure alternatives

SFTP stands for SSH File Transfer Protocol (or Secure File Transfer Protocol).
FTPS stands for FTP over SSL (or FTP over TLS).

SFTP and FTPS are two different protocols that essentially do the same thing: they use TLS encryption to protect data from third-party access and tampering during transfer.

Origin: While FTPS is a security extension for FTP, SFTP was developed for Secure Shell (SSH) as an alternative to FTP.

SFTP and FTPS support for IONOS

Depending on your hosting type, your hosting package supports either FTPS or SFTP:

Linux-based web hosting and managed servers support SFTP.
Windows-based web hosting (ASP.NET hosting) supports FTPS.

The type of your hosting can be seen from the name of your hosting package. Windows packages always have the addition "Windows" in the name, for example "Web Hosting Business Windows". Without this addition, it is a Linux package.

Software requirements

To use SFTP or FTPS, your software (FTP program, website editor, etc.) must support the respective protocol. Most current FTP programs meet this requirement. Current FTP programs usually support at least one of the two protocols. We recommend FileZilla because it supports both SFTP and FTPS and is free.
To connect to your webspace via SFTP or FTPS, you need to configure the FTP program with your connection data. We will show you where to find this data in the article Connection data for secure FTP at a glance.

For more help on using your access, see the step-by-step article Transferring files securely with FTP.