[laumars]

If you need an SSH server to begin with, then there's still some setting up you need to do before hand. The pain of having to delete a few files afterwards is really nothing compared to renting a Linux box, setting up SSH accounts with fail2ban and/or SSH keys; and so on.

So file-share doesn't even work as a pain free solution like you suggest it does.

As I said before, I don't like to stamp on another's creativity. I'm just saying that there are better tools for doing this which already come pre-installed with most Linux distros, UNIX's and OS X.

[nomeata]

Why would you have to mess with SSH account_s_? Only the sending side needs an account, no further setup on the server required. It doesn’t even have to be your server, your university’s server is enough.

[laumars]

Most people are not at uni and rented boxes usually have root open by default expecting customers to then disable root access and create a user with su / sudo rights. Plus I tend to take things further and create a dedicated groups for ssh so that rsync / sftp users cannot use a system shell nor port forward and are chrooted while a very small subset of administrators have full ssh access.

Plus even if you do borrow someone else's box, can you be sure that they'd even be grateful that you're using up their bandwidth?

Ssh is a dangerous protocol to leave open to the WAN, so setting up an ssh server properly, while not a time consuming job, will still take longer and more effort than simply deleting a few files afterwards.