I created a static website mockup for a friend and decided to put it up on my s3 account for a temporary hosting spot. So I uploaded the site files and made them public.
I was surprised to learn that I can access the site via (actual path redacted, but example illustrates point):
https://s3.amazonaws.com/my/s3/path/to/file.html
How is this possible? I expected to have some sort of identifier in the url, referencing my account, but clearly this is not the case.
Can someone explain how amazon does this?
Access to s3 can be secured in a variety of ways, but frequently people want to host these files directly out of s3, so they provide public access. You must have setup access to your bucket/objects so that they are public.
You can also set the bucket name to be a domain of your choosing ala files.yourdomain.com, add a CNAME pointing to s3, and they will automatically determine that the files should come from your public bucket, using a little bit of internal rewriting.