The ability to access a remote computer system on which
one does not have an account, via the Internet’s File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
Users have restricted access rights with anonymous FTP and usually can only copy
files to or from a public directory, often named /pub,
on the remote system. Users can also typically use FTP commands, such as listing
files and directories. When using anonymous FTP, the user accesses the remote
computer system with an FTP program and generally uses anonymous or ftp as a logon name. The
password is usually the user’s e-mail address, although a user can often skip
giving a password or give a false e-mail address. In other cases, the password
can be the word anonymous. Many FTP sites do not permit
anonymous FTP access in order to maintain security. Those that do permit
anonymous FTP sometimes restrict users to only downloading files for the same
reason.