I've racked up 7.9GB on my free Dropbox account. Until there is an alternative that offers more for free, I probably wouldn't consider switching. However, I'm encouraged by the amount of cloud hosting services emphasizing privacy, maybe at some point dropbox will follow suit.
You could try Copy.com[1] if you want more space for free. They are providing 15GB as the starting storage space, while 5GB for each referral.
I use Wuala, but only because I think I can trust more Swiss than US based software company. That being said, it's all about trust, since both are closed source and there's only trust that's left to the users. I wish there existed an ubiquitous open source alternative.
I was typing another comment just as you posted this but making essentially the same point. If you are using Linux, FreeBSD or Mac OSX you can use local open source encryption before your data touches the sync program (or even the online backup servers) with EncFS.[1] I'm using it with Dropbox and it is solid, easy to use and set up, and does efficient file-based encryption (so no re-uploading folders just because yo…
Thanks for the info, but I said ubiquitous exactly because I need something that "just works" on each one of Windows, Linux, Android and iOS. And I'm not aware of any open source solution there, hence have to use Wuala.
Valid point. Conversely though (I'm probably over simplifying here) wouldn't this require some sort of secret instructions in the encryption software to send the user's key to HQ? Wouldn't said transmission be detectable by logging traffic from the encryption program? Granted many won't do that but it would only take one person sniffing packets on their machine to reveal it.
The password would be a number of bytes. They could easily use stenography and hide it in an upload or download of the file. Or have an update that would weakly encrypt the data, or encrypt and decrypt to a key known to them, making it trivial to retrieve the data. Without the source, their security is meaningless. You've just given a closed source application access to the network, and to your files. You've already…
Looks like you were bitten by autocorrect (and meant steganography).
I've racked up 7.9GB on my free Dropbox account. Until there is an alternative that offers more for free, I probably wouldn't consider switching. However, I'm encouraged by the amount of cloud hosting services emphasizing privacy, maybe at some point dropbox will follow suit.
Microsoft just upped their SkyDrive to 25 gigs I believe. Edit: Actually, I guess that's for their basic paying account.
Or, if you'd had a SkyDrive account before the change.
Chicago? Last time I checked, that city is within the jurisdiction of the United States and not immune to national security gag letters. No thanks. Swiss based Wuala.com is a much better solution.
What about BitSync, it strikes me as good option, but i'm no crypto guy. http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html
Bitsync is very good but it is not quite a dropbox clone as it lacks the ability to retrieve the files via web, it does very limited version control, it has a pretty rigid structure of sync'd folders (for instance you can't sync a subfolder of a folder you are already syncing). Some of those functions can be implemented using owncloud but this latter is still bit buggy and requires you to have server space.
I've had this worry as well, in regards to loosing passwords. I still believe writing everything down on a piece of paper can help. I have a little black journal that I carry with me everywhere that has all my passwords in it. Typing them in is the issue when they are longer strings, and mixed symbols. Only issue is protecting that journal.. Hopefully I can eat the pages if things were to arise. Ha
If you are sufficiently paranoid about having to destroy the notebook, tissue paper and water soluble ink go a long way to making it easier. I made about a dozen for a murder mystery party about two years ago and still have one lying around somewhere. A small waterproof bag should make sure it isn't inadvertantly damaged in the rain.
The more dramatic solution is flash paper, which destroys all conceivable evidence. Don't fly with it.