also, there's the weird and confusing details / thread from yesterday where dropbox seem to be relying on security through obscurity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6286674
Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
21–30 of 120 posts
Re: Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
#22I've seen a lot of people recommend Lastpass lately, but couldn't the government force Lastpass to create a backdoor for them to get the passwords before they are encrypted? I'd also worry about a catastrophic event of Lastpass losing those passwords somehow, and then remaining locked out of many websites. And what about Bittorent Sync with an old PC as an alternative? They even have an iOS app now.
If I'm not mistaken, LastPass keeps both a local and cloud version of your password. When you're having trouble connecting to LastPass's servers, LastPass still functions. I think it's just that if the password changed on another device since the last time it synced locally, you'll still have the old one.
So I'm pretty sure that you'd have to lose basically every device it's on and have LastPass's cloud deleted to lose them all.
Re: Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
#23Chicago? 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.
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.
Re: Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
#24I just use Truecrypt volumes within Dropbox for anything I'd really care about losing. I guess it's an extra step, but I find I just like Dropbox better than the competition. And things I really care about (tax returns, for instance) I find I access rarely and always on a PC.
Re: Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
#25Chicago? 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.
Yeah I wish it was more common reaction to America based services. Especially for foreigners it's like putting public folder out there on the Internet which is fine for cat pictures but not really something you want any sort of private data on.
One interface might be more shiny than the other or maybe one of the services offer few more GB's what's good is that when there are 100's or 1000's individuals who are in position to read your data at will at any moment.
Re: Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
#26Chicago? 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.
Isn't switching from one closed source backup system to another closed source system overlooking the elephant in the room? These companies are legally required to rat you out when the government comes knocking (some even doing so without demanding a valid warrant, and profiting from LEO requests).
SpiderOak has been saying they "expect to make the SpiderOak client code open source in the not-distant future" [1] for years now, and their code still is not fully open-source. I completely understand their situation and know it's not always possible to fully open up the code, but I'm not able to overlook this deal breaker either.
Encrypt locally using only open source tools, then sync with whichever online backup/sync provider you like. It's the storage version of a 'dumb pipe', maybe we call it 'dumb containers'. Everything else is marketing bullshit which will evaporate once that first official demand for your data arrives.
[1]https://spideroak.com/faq/questions/35/why_isnt_spideroak_op...
Re: Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
#27I'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.
I bet their competitors can't wait for you to switch to their free accounts.
In other words: why not pay?
Re: Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
#28I've seen a lot of people recommend Lastpass lately, but couldn't the government force Lastpass to create a backdoor for them to get the passwords before they are encrypted? I'd also worry about a catastrophic event of Lastpass losing those passwords somehow, and then remaining locked out of many websites. And what about Bittorent Sync with an old PC as an alternative? They even have an iOS app now.
If I'm not mistaken, LastPass keeps both a local and cloud version of your password. When you're having trouble connecting to LastPass's servers, LastPass still functions. I think it's just that if the password changed on another device since the last time it synced locally, you'll still have the old one. So I'm pretty sure that you'd have to lose basically every device it's on and have LastPass's cloud deleted to lo…
They don't keep a server version of the password (they don't have access to your password), but they do have the authentication credentials. A password manager that only worked online would be frustrating.
Re: Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
#29Chicago? 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.
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 you changed a file inside).
Gnome desktops even have the Gnome EncFS Manager[2] if you want a GUI way to set it up.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncFS [2]https://bitbucket.org/obensonne/gnome-encfs/
Re: Why I'm saying goodbye to Dropbox and hello to SpiderOak Hive
#30Chicago? 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