I currently use an external source for hosting my website and was curious in understanding why the standard way of uploading and downloading files to and from the sites are using FTP. From what I understand that is very insecure and everything is transmitted via cleartext over the internet. My hosting company only allow using an FTP client or through their website using https or I was also told APR(what is that?)or ARP What else can I do?

Yes, standard FTP sends everything over an unencrypted connection so security-wise SFTP would be much better. But many people upload the web pages directly from dreamweaver, frontpage and what not that doesn't support SFTP (last I checked). Because of that many hosting companies stick with FTP because it's old and accepted.

APR could be http://apr.apache.org/ but I don't see what a programming library has to do with anything. But HTTPS is also encrypted so I don't see why you can't use that other than it might be inconvenient. Otherwise, unless you have an ssh account on your hosting company, I don't think there is much else you can do.

So true. This is just a short term solution. I plan on hosting my own web server very soon. It just mind boggles me that they still use that unsecure method! Thanks