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BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

torrentfreak.com

11–20 of 291 posts

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#12
post #10
post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

I really feel that BS is a different use case.

You're probably right... the bittorrent speciality.

I guess the marketing is to provide them with a nice level of deniability. It's not a Dropbox competitor, it's just encrypted folder sharing.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#14
post #3

Would love it if source was released (or if somebody could point it out to me).

No source, but they plan to have an API [1]. Personally I'd be quite content if they just documented the protocol...

[1] http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/8816-will-syncapp-be-open-...

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#15

We're looking at AeroFS and BitTorrent Sync for sharing sensitive files with our team members. We're leaning towards BS mainly because this feels completely P2P, whereas AeroFS may become useless if the company shuts down. Is that right? I'd love to hear from someone who has used both of these about stability, sync conflicts, CPU load etc. Also would love to hear about plans to open source BS.

Did you also look at SparkleShare?

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#17
They have a native linux 64bit client, that's great! The linux binary is cli only, but provides a web interface on port 8888. However, the daemon binds to address 0.0.0.0 and not just localhost (127.0.0.1 or ::1)! So make sure you have a firewall. Otherwise everybody can access the web interface and thus your secrets.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#18
post #4

Since there is no central server, doesn't that mean that one device will have to be always on? That would add a degree of overhead and complication that services like Dropbox don't have.

There's a rendezvous server that also serves as a fallback relay in case two devices that want to sync are behind highly-unfriendly NATs. In that sense, it's exactly like Dropbox.

But it doesn't store your data, so yes, one device must always be on in order to sync with a new device. However, if you have a device that needs changes made on another one, it will just wait around and sync whenever the device with changes comes back online.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#19
I got in on the closed Alpha just last week, and it immediately fit into a use case I had where I needed to sync a folder on an OSX machine with a remote linux server. SFTP would have worked in this use case just as well, except it can be janky to slot into a non-developer's workflow.

Long story short, I setup BS on both machines with an absolute minimum of fuss, copied the password over, and the folder synced. Definitely does one thing and does it well.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#20
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really feel that BS is a different use case.

You're probably right... the bittorrent speciality. I guess the marketing is to provide them with a nice level of deniability. It's not a Dropbox competitor, it's just encrypted folder sharing.

I would respectfully disagree with what you seem to be implying.

This service would mostly be used by us who are wary about trusting Google/Microsoft/Dropbox and the judgement of their automated decision systems with our life . Yesterday there was a HN story about a guy who got kicked off Google Docs because an automated program was trolling/mining through their users files and its judgement was not to be questioned by mere mortals.

What if I put a picture of me and my kid playing in the swimming pool -- what is to prevent Dropbox/Google/Skydrive from tagging it as offensive and setting an overzealous DA or social-worker upon my family ? People have been arrested/detained at border crossings for perfectly innocuous pictures like these.

Therefore if you think privacy is only important for people stealing stuff, your are being naive.

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