Enable or Disable Anonymous Authentication

Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista

Enable Anonymous authentication for an FTP site or server when you want to allow users to provide a well-known user account, such as “anonymous” or “ftp”, to access any site content. By default, Anonymous authentication for an FTP site or server is disabled in IIS 7.

Consider using the following best practices when you configure Anonymous authentication for an FTP site or server:

  • Create a group for all anonymous user accounts. You can deny access permissions to resources based on this group membership.

  • Deny execute permissions for anonymous users to all executables in Windows directories and subdirectories.

For more information about how to configure the Anonymous authentication identity, see IIS 7.0: Configure the Anonymous Authentication Identity.

To enable or disable Anonymous authentication

  1. Open IIS Manager.

  2. In Features View, double-click FTP Authentication.

  3. On the FTP Authentication page, select Anonymous Authentication.

  4. In the Actions pane, click Enable to enable Anonymous authentication or click Disable to disable Anonymous authentication.

See Also

Concepts

Configuring FTP Authentication