How long should a share link stay active?

Every active share link is an open door to your files. The point isn’t to be alarmed — that’s what sharing is — but to decide how long the door stays open. Too short: people ask you for the link again. Too long: it lingers in mailboxes, histories and forwards, years after it served its purpose.

The problem with the eternal link

The “forever” link of shared drives is the most underestimated flaw of modern sharing: nobody ever comes back to cut off access. A mailbox compromised in 2028 will expose the links sent in 2026 — with the files still behind them. A time-limited link turns that permanent risk into a bounded one: once expired, the link leads nowhere.

Choosing the duration for the context

• One-off handover (a folder, a deliverable): a few days is enough — 7 days, the default of TransferNow’s free plan, covers the weekend lapse.
• Client delivery: think about the recipient’s pace — internal sign-off, time off. 30 to 90 days avoids re-sends without letting things linger.
• Long-term availability (masters, archives, reprint files): up to 365 days with an account — and downloads stay tracked for the whole period.
• Sensitive data: as short as possible + a password. The lifetime is a security layer in its own right — and a GDPR compliance argument too (storage limitation).

Revocation: the other half of the story

The scheduled lifetime handles the normal case; revocation handles the unexpected: wrong recipient, wrong version, end of contract. Being able to deactivate a transfer immediately — and check in the tracking who had already downloaded it — changes the nature of the mistake: a manageable incident instead of an irreversible leak. It’s the decisive advantage of the link over the attachment, explored in link or attachment.

In short: short by default, longer when the recipient requires it, revocable always. And if you’re hesitating between two durations — pick the shorter one: re-sending a link costs ten seconds, a forgotten link can cost far more.