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BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

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Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#91
post #64
post #33

I looked at BTSync the other day when researching self-hosted Dropbox alternatives. It looks like a great product and so far beats the pants off the closest competitor, Seafile, for ease of install and use. I was really impressed. But unfortunately it's not open source, so it comes down to an issue of trust--which, in the end, is the same issue with Dropbox and really the entire point of moving to self-hosted for me.…

Did you ever evaluate http://owncloud.org/ ? I have never used it, but looked at briefly awhile back and it is open source.

Tooo hard to set-up, once you set it up it's a pain to use it and then it's a lot bigger pain to keep it running.

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#92
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this be game over for AeroFS? Yes, BT Sync is direct competition, but I've used AeroFS for over two years now, since their early alphas and AeroFS works almost flawlessly for P2P sync. It also has S3 sync for their team server which works very well. AeroFS is free for everything BT Sync does, it's only when you get into features that BT Sync doesn't handle at all that you would need to pay for AeroFS. I thi…

AeroFS's showstopper for me was no support for 32bit machines - my largest collection of storage is an old Mac Mini with half a dozen large usb drives plugged in, but AeroFS wont run on it. (and the single core Mac Mini can't be upgraded to a version of OS X that'll run 64bit java).

Even AeroFS has Dropbox's handicap of 'you have to put everything in one folder' or mess around with symlinks. It ought to have been a little improvised at least.

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#93

imho there are only two killers out there btsync & seafile. - btsync has the ease of use that seafile doens't have - seafile has optional file versionning that btsync doesn't have

Checkout AeroFS, it's P2P, it can do versioning with the team server and has a pretty nice UI.

java signup magic ? i don't know man

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#94
post #5

I'd say it could be troubling for dropbox. It's probably game over for https://aerofs.com though unless AeroFS drastically changes/pivots. For dropbox, they do have some advantages. Bittorrent brings up thoughts of piracy. Dropbox doesn't have that reputation and would be much more acceptable in corporate environments. Additionally, Dropbox has integration with a lot of apps and I don't see that happening with BT Syn…

It seems to me that Dropbox is becoming complacent. They still only offer 2 GB of storage for their free plan. Someone else here commented about using Bittorrent to sync their music library, since the 2 GB that Dropbox offers would probably be too little space. But now there are new Dropbox-like services offering MUCH more space. The largest that I've seen so far is Copy.com, which offers 15 GB for free or 20 GB free…

Just as Copy.com offers more space with referrals, so does Dropbox. With my student account and referrals, I jumped up to about 20GB. They also do pretty well with other bonuses (e.g. new HTC phone netted me an additional 23GB for two years).

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#95
post #90
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do you trust BitTorrent to properly encrypt your data as they promise? To not send it to someone else on the sly?" I've currently got BTSync dealing with a bunch of "non-private" data, and EncFS (and BoxCryptor on OS X) encrypting the more private data I'm syncing with BTSync. I'm still "trusting" the BTSync app not to mess with my machine(s) in unexpected ways - but I have to trust every application I run to do tha…

I'm confident enough that's secured against pretty much everything up to federal law enforcement or nation state level snooping. Could you please elaborate what you mean by that? As far as I know, it is not possible to "crack" EncFS or Truecrypt as long as you use reasonably strong password and are able to protect it. Or am I wrong?

What _I_ meant by that (and keep in mind my answer might not be based on the same circumstances/juristiction/type-of-encrypted-data as you) - is that I'm reasonably sure my employers, family members, office-mates, cleaning staff - and even state and local police, will not have access to my data unless I choose to give it to them. At the same time I'm under no impression that federal level law enforcement can manipulate things so I don't really have any choice about whether to hand over my keys (I'm _reasonably_ sure that at least local and state law enforcement where I live are unlikely to use "rubber hose cryptography" to extract my passphrase). And I don't know for sure, but I strongly suspect that various three letter agencies or "nation states" probably do have the resources needed to brute force any password/phrase I'm using (including 25+ character random upper/lower/digit/symbol ones I let 1Password generate, or perhaps they'd just brute force the 6 word mis-spelled 1Password master passphrase).

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#96
post #95
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confident enough that's secured against pretty much everything up to federal law enforcement or nation state level snooping. Could you please elaborate what you mean by that? As far as I know, it is not possible to "crack" EncFS or Truecrypt as long as you use reasonably strong password and are able to protect it. Or am I wrong?

What _I_ meant by that (and keep in mind my answer might not be based on the same circumstances/juristiction/type-of-encrypted-data as you) - is that I'm reasonably sure my employers, family members, office-mates, cleaning staff - and even state and local police, will not have access to my data unless I choose to give it to them. At the same time I'm under no impression that federal level law enforcement can manipula…

Ah, thanks for explanation. Also thanks for introducing me to the phrase "rubber hose cryptography", I didn't know that.

It is probably good to keep in mind what you said. All passwords are only as good as your ability to keep them for yourself.

Also remember that if someone (feds) would had physical access to your computer while encrypted data is mounted, then the password doesn't matter. Even if you manage to turn off the computer, they could still decrypt the keys by "cold boot attack"[1] within minutes after shutdown. Actually anybody can do that easily. [2]

For normal-purpose encryption that this thread is about, it would be too much hassle, but if I had something I would want to really encrypt and be sure nobody would get to it, then: 1. I would use multiple layers of encryption with the possibility to decrypt one layer in multiple ways (plausible deniability) 2. Would not rely on password only, but also use some external key/token, maybe something like this: https://www.crypto-stick.com/ 3. Make the access to data quickly destroyable if I choose so. Several options come to my mind. E.g. make the key/token easily destroyable for me. Other option would be to physically destroy the media where data is stored. These would render the data inaccessible if I choose so. I would of course lose the data.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack [2] http://vr-zone.com/articles/bitlocker-pgp-truecrypt-cracked-...

Re: BitTorrent Sync Is A Dropbox Killer, Or Maybe Much More Than That

#97
post #64
post #33

I looked at BTSync the other day when researching self-hosted Dropbox alternatives. It looks like a great product and so far beats the pants off the closest competitor, Seafile, for ease of install and use. I was really impressed. But unfortunately it's not open source, so it comes down to an issue of trust--which, in the end, is the same issue with Dropbox and really the entire point of moving to self-hosted for me.…

Did you ever evaluate http://owncloud.org/ ? I have never used it, but looked at briefly awhile back and it is open source.

the linux server is implemented in java, which is pretty heavy for my 512mb ram box
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