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Do hosting companies steal web files. Do I need to be concerned?

I have been working on a web site now for 2 years approx. I am concerned that If I get a hosting company to host my site some individual will steal files and maybe pass them on as their own. I am also looking into hosting the site myself as I work in IT but don;t want the hassle. I am interested in suggestions and maybe even a reliable and trustworthy hosting company.

Public Comments

1. You never know. It's definitely likely to happen. If the data is very important, i'd host the site myself.
2. I seriously doubt that they are interested in your files! I would be more concerned with the average public stealing them as this is easy to do! All one has to do is copy images or text! Even if you have image files protected someone can easily copy them with screencap software!
3. wise man
4. It's possible, who knows with all the different hosting companies accross the world. I have one and wouldn't even think of it. Get caught once and your ruined.
5. No and No. On the other hand anyone can view and save your source code so as soon as you post a site anyone viewing it can 'steal' the source code. ///
6. It depends what you mean when you say steal the file. Anybody can copy and save an image off of any website, just by right clicking the image. For instance, I could steal your avatar's photograph right now, if I wanted to. In that respect, anything you put on a website will only be semi-safe at best anyway. Because anybody could copy an image, text, document, etc etc from your website. It's the nature of the internet, because everything is public, nothing is secure.
7. It is possible but probably quite rare. It depends on the host and the honesty of the IT guys working there. Obviously a big company with thousands or even millions of hosting accounts, are probably less likely to look at your files because they're so busy with support requests etc. On the other hand a smaller hosts staff might have more time on their hands if they don't have many users and might get bored and thus start snooping. OR it could work the other way around. A large company might have plenty of staff who can thus relax because they are not overworked thus leading to them getting bored and snooping through peoples files. Likewise a smaller host could be run of it's feet trying to keep costs low and having few staff and not have time to even think about looking at people files. You see what I'm saying? There is no 'yes' or 'no' answer to your question. It depends on the individuals concerned, who works where, how busy they are etc. There is no straight forward answer. Personally, if it's that important to you then host it yourself - Even then someone can steal the html and images of your site straight from their browser (don't forget http actually sends complete html code and image files to display at the other end). Although they certainly won't be able to steal the scripts you run on the server if you host it all yourself. However it could open you up to DDOS attacks etc as you would have a static IP or at least dynamic DNS for your domain to work correctly. If you like my answer, consider voting for it.
8. Most of the hosting firms have copyright and privacy policy. So it shouldnt happen. And in most cases it doesn't. I own a website development company. We usually host it on our own servers since we make a lot of websites in a month. Its faster for us and easier for us to manage. But it will be expensive for you to have your own server... But if you need help in hosting please let me know.. We also have a hosting server but we only provide that to our clients since we don't want corrupted files or bad files.
9. As others have said, end users can steal images and produced html code just by using a web browser. However asp and php scripts could only be stolen by the web hosting company. To protect these, you could perhaps encrypt the source code, or in the case of Microsoft .net produce a .dll or .exe file containing the code. Another suggestion is to split the functionality across multiple web sites, so that no one web space provider has access to all your source files.