Patent ID: 8005859

Claim:
A method comprising the steps of: a) hosting an online file storage on one or more server computers communicatively coupled to a network; and b) receiving, from a file owner interface accessible to a file owner after authentication and hosted on the one or more server computers hosting the online file storage, a selection of at least one file from a list of one or more files uploaded exclusively by the file owner, a time period and an authorization for an unsolicited file transfer of the at least one file to a predetermined recipient after an expiration of the time period, wherein the file owner interface is configured to: i) view and edit the one or more files, one or more access permissions associated with each of the one or more files, the time period and the expiration of the time period; ii) receive a first file owner contact configured to receive, at regular intervals, a confirmation that the first file owner contact is available across the network; iii) receive a second file owner contact configured to alert the file owner of one or more communication defects in the first file owner contact and to notify the file owner that, responsive to the expiration of the time period, an email will be sent to the predetermined recipient, wherein the email comprises a user interface control comprising one or more HTML tag attributes configured to access the at least one file and wherein the user interface control is updated to reflect the authorization for the unsolicited file transfer.