Access to my public_html files?

[guidom64]

This is something that's bugging me already for a while.

Can anybody enter into my public_html, find and download all I have there ?

Expl. I have 14 e-Books uploaded to a /downloads/files.pdf folder in public_html, nothing has a password protection.
Can some find out all download links without I have given themes ?

And if yes, would a download folder work outside the public_html area ?
I remember I made once a download folder outside public_html to try this, but could not get access to it? Perhaps I didn't check security and changed from standard 644 to 755 at that time.
I dont want to make it password protected, but as well not too accessible.

thanks for info's

[sjlplat]

If your files are in a directory under the public_html directory, they can be accessed from the web. You can deliver files from above the public_html directory with server-side scripts. I recently developed an mp3 download site that delivers the files from a directory above public_html to prevent direct downloads.