Starting an automatic download in ASP

Question

Hi All

I want to setup my website to do something simillar to the Microsoft website when you download something whereby, when you click on the download link, you are redirected and the download starts automatically on the page load event of the next page. The purpose of this, is that I am hoping to be able to limit certain people to the downloads. As it is, you have to be logged in to see the available downloads. Now, albeit that you are logged in, you are still only allowed to have certain products from this site. Now in the process of doing a redirect, I am hoping to do some form of checking to make sure that the specific person who is logged in is allowed to download what it is that they are attempting to and if yes, allow it, if no, deny it.

Now, that being said, is there also a way that I can mask the url of the file location. this would be just to prevent them from going straight to the download, ie www.example.com/folder/folder/file.ext which will allow you to download anyways.

I actually don't know what I am up against here so any comments and advise will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
Ricardo