It does require having an account on both machines though. I've used nc in situations where one machine is owned by someone else.

Ssh with tar is handy for multiple files. Just be careful you're sending and receiving from the right place. Similar for rsync.

(cd /right/place && tar -cf - patt*) | ssh remote '(cd /dest && tar -xvf -)'

Of course, you can also use the compression flags with tar.