In Active Worlds you can send files directly to other users. To send files to someone, they must be on your contact list and have enabled file transfers. To send someone files, right-click on their name and select Send File.... You can only send someone files if they are currently online.

Sending files works much like joining in that when you attempt to send someone a file, they are first given an opportunity to accept or reject your request. If they accept your offer, you will see a file transfer dialog which says "Sending files..." on your screen and they will see a file transfer dialog which says "Receiving files..." on their screen:

Once this dialog is up, you select the files to send by pressing the Select Files button. You can select several files at the same time to all be sent at once. While you are selecting files to be sent, the person you are sending them to can select a directory to store them in.

Once the file or files are selected and the recipient is ready for the transfer, press the Send button to begin the sending the files. As the files are being transferred, a progress bar will display the percentage complete and the current transfer rate will also be displayed in kilobytes per second. (A kilobyte is 8192 bits, or binary digits, of data.)

Once the transfer is complete, you can leave this dialog box open for as long as you like and send additional files to the same user later. If either you or the recipient closes the dialog, however, the link will terminate and you will have to re-establish the connection like you did the first time in order to send additional files.

You can control who can and cannot send you files from the Privacy Dialog and your contact list.

To send or receive files, you must be a registered citizen.

File Transfer and Firewalls

The file transfer function requires the ability to establish a direct TCP connection across the internet between the sending computer and the receiving computer. Firewalls and proxy servers will often interfere with this ability. In particular, if you are running Active Worlds from behind a firewall that does not allow inbound TCP connections to be created, you will not be able to send files to other users.

Important Note About File Transfer!

Be aware that damaging programs such as computer viruses can be communicated to your computer from other users if you allow them to send files to you, even if the person sending the files is a friend and means well. For this reason, if you are offered a file from someone you do not know very well and trust to have taken appropriate precautions, you are strongly encouraged to reject the file!

In particular, never run executable programs (e.g. files ending in the .exe extension) sent to you by another user. Once running, executable programs can do almost anything to your computer, including (for example) deleting important files or erasing your entire hard disk!

WARNING: Deliberately sending damaging computer viruses or other harmful programs to another user in Active Worlds is a very serious offense and shall be grounds for immediate termination of your account. Furthermore, such action may be a prosecutable criminal offense. If Activeworlds Inc. determines that you are responsible for deliberately communicating viruses or any other kind of damaging software (including, but not limited to, "trojan horses" and/or other "back door" hacking programs) to other users in Active Worlds we may, at our discretion, turn all relevant details of your account over to law enforcement authorities for criminal prosecution.