The Devil of File Sharing

You may have heard of the many iffy file sharing websites from years ago, such as Rapidshare, and may have thought they sucked, but I've been personally dealing with the worst one...and unlike other websites, they haven't changed one bit. That place is called 4shared.

Yes, during that first paragraph, you may have thought of them, as they had silly restrictions that make you question who would support their company, but as of recently, I've seen they are worse on the inside than the outside.

It all started when I got the usual occasional e-mail from them, one that says they will delete all files on-account if you don't sign in. I think this is a stupid practice to begin with, but let me just say this is the most reasonable thing this website does; This is done to save them storage, as if you aren't using your files, then it's costing them money to keep your files on their servers. Their other limitations are, to put it mildly, dumb.

I logged in, as 4shared has a limitation that practically requires you to keep your 4shared account, downloading files! Now this is a practice I believe is stupid on any website that does it. What's the point of forcing users to sign up just to gain access to files, especially places like forums, where you'll just cause a user to sign up that never interacts with the community? That's a waste of space, y'know. Anyways, 4shared requires signing up just to download any other user's files. This is probably done for control, as they have a free and paid "premium" plan, and being not signed in wouldn't let you take advantage of their lil' scam...

When I signed in, I was greeted with a "file explorer" interface where I could upload files, similar to what another file sharing website, Mediafire, did. Free 4shared users get 15GB storage, which is the same amount Google Drive gives you, which sounded wonderful; I mean, it was extra storage! I could take advantage of this to have more room on my commonly-used cloud storage websites! Of course, this was too good to be true and I fell for the trap, uploading my Adobe CS6 backup and other, smaller files. It seemed promising until I got my new laptop, since the Adobe programs aren't on it yet.

I went to download a bunch of the ".r##" files and zip them all. Of course, you probably can already guess that 4shared wouldn't accept that, stopping me to say it was too big to archive. "Too big"? What are you, a stupid website from the 2000's? Google shows there's no problem with letting the user download all of their files in a single ZIP file! In fact, there's something else odd here, the lack of a syncing program!

What file storage website doesn't have one of these nowadays?

Nice useless apps you've got there, 4shared.

You see, the popular file storage websites nowadays have a program you can install that automatically keeps a folder on your computer in sync with your cloud storage, which makes it easy to download and transfer files. Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and MEGA all have one of these programs, but not 4shared! All it has to offer are mobile apps for playing music, viewing photos, and managing files.

Gee, wouldn't it be convenient if they had a way to download all files to the user's computer at once and easily transfer files? Well, I have a suspicion why they don't have this modern convenience, but to do that, I have to show the next limitation of 4shared.

4shared has a 3GB daily traffic limit, to keep you from using their service much without having to wait a day before continuing. While other websites have a limit like this, they don't usually display it to the user and the owner of the files can download without using up their quota.

4shared, you suck. Hope you become bankrupt one day!

Of course, 4shared isn't logical; It wants more control of you, to ensure you waste your money monthly on them! Attempting to download your own files when over this limit will stop you and show more of their restrictions! Remember how I brought up they don't have a modern syncing program? This is probably why too, because if you could download your whole 4shared storage, the daily traffic limit wouldn't matter!

How did I run into the limit this quickly? That Adobe CS6 backup is about nine gigabytes large, so I have to download two gigabytes at a time (due to the aforementioned ZIP size limitation) just to get eight parts of the whole creative suite. What's confusing is how it counts this quota. Two days ago, I downloaded two, 2GB ZIP files from 4shared and reached the quota, but today the meter reset and started again at 0GB, but I had an internet issue during the download. You'd think 4shared would care about you, but this website's basically the devil so it counts the download twice against the meter, causing it to reach 3.8GB just because one download failed and they don't care to check what file you're downloading.

I doubt it will ever happen, but I hope 4shared suffers a bad fate, something like bankruptcy. Something that takes them out of business, because they seem to be behind the times in terms of how they restrict the user compared to other storage solutions, and how inconvenient and naggy they are with their web interface. Screw you, 4shared, or should I say 666scammed! Once I get my Adobe programs off your website, I won't use you for anything big anymore! You're the devil of file sharing websites!