To be mystified by WeTransfer - what’s it FOR??

[BernardBlacksBreakfastWine]

I am obviously missing something as there must be a reason for its existence?

I was recently required to send a short video to a company. They requested I use WeTransfer. Fine - I did it. But why couldn’t I just attach the file to my own email? It was less than 60 seconds of video.

No you probably couldn't have emailed. You'd either have had to compress it into a file format such as ZIP, which would be rejected by the organisation's mailservers due to the increased risk of malware. Or, if you had been able to email it, it would have been stripped out by mailserver antivirus due to the risk of malware running when the file arrived at the destination. Using a third party site enables download to a location where files are automatically scanned for malware signatures before being run, and can be quarantined without disruption if a malware signature is detected.

Many people who use WeTransfer regularly will have a paid account that allows for a much more generous window of time before the files 'expire'.

I know this doesn't apply in your situation, but surely if they're waiting for the files then they'll click the link to go and download them. You can always have We Transfer send an email with the link directly to the recipient so it will show the email was from WeTransfer and hopefully won't get lost

If your twitchy, you probably don't want to know just how insanely insecure email is....