
F-Secure Launches A Dropbox For the Dark Web And A VPN - sampo
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tamlinmagee/2013/11/14/f-secure-launches-a-dropbox-for-the-dark-web-and-a-vpn-that-could-erase-content-borders-everywhere/
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e1ven
It's difficult to know what they're offering with so few details.

The article writes that "F Secure will not stop a proper investigation from
the authorities. But it has done its level best to make sure your content
cannot be combed and picked up by intelligence agencies or advertisers,
without your knowledge or through illegal means, and promises that everything
from the thumbnail to the content itself and the metadata is all encrypted."

I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile these two statements. Perhaps
everything is encrypted, but they have access to your key (Similar to Lavabit)
?

Alternatively, they might only be referring to delivering metadata to
'authorities'.

I'm not sure where their niche is - People who sorta-kinda want things
private, but not enough to use a serverless solution such as
[http://www.filetransporter.com/](http://www.filetransporter.com/) ?

~~~
idamateur
Im thinking it might appeal to the average (non-technical) European who is
upset about the Snowden revelations

~~~
polarix
Yes, it would appeal to anyone who doesn't have the capability to evaluate
their misleading advertising.

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sillysaurus2
_Younited collates your existing cloud accounts, making pictures, video, or
whatever else you want to store and share available in one spot, including
sharing options with popular services like Facebook FB +0.57%and Skydrive._

This is the opposite of "encrypted and impossible for authorities to access
unless they get your key, which we don't have." Which is to say, the opposite
of private. How does this service offer privacy?

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mynameishere
I just skimmed that at first, and really had no idea what had been said. Then
I went back and really read the first couple of paragraphs.

They really, really look like they were written by an automated process. I
can't imagine a humanoid writing this:

 _Quite simply, everything is encrypted, with the purpose of transferring the
most basic data ownership and levels of privacy back to the control of the
user, even when sharing through Facebook._

I mean, it sounds...sort-of kind-of human. But how do "quite simply" and
"everything is encrypted" go together? There's nothing simple about
encryption. A 14 year old writing a book report could put weird constructions
like that together, but this whole thing had similar weirdness throughout, but
with vocabulary I wouldn't expect from a bored teenager.

You know they are already writing sports articles with computers. Why not
business articles?

~~~
woof
Sounds like marketingspeak to me.

A one liner unique value proposition with cool new words like encryption and
Facebook if you will...

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kamjam
So this is the issue with the term "dark" and the internet, it just makes it
sound seedy and people are up to no good, using tools for illegal for very
underground purposes. No where in the article itself does it mention "dark
web" apart from the title.

The Dark Mail Alliance watch out.

~~~
jlgaddis
_> No where in the article itself does it mention "dark web" apart from the
title._

Yep. I was looking for the reference to Tor and hoping that they were offering
"dropbox" via a hidden service.

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summerdown2
I'm not sure I understand what the offering is.

How does:

"everything is encrypted"

work together with:

"The Younited service automatically scans all files for malware that you add
to the cloud?"

... presumably that makes it server-side encryption in which they're reserving
the right to perform some manipulation of files first (virus scanning,
deduplication?)?

... but if so, how can they include the statement:

"we like what dropbox and skydrive do, but where is the privacy?"

Isn't this exactly what dropbox does? I presume they will use ssl to transfer
the data, perhaps even encrypt it in storage after they've scanned the
plaintext, but surely this is as as vulnerable to their own staff and their
government as any other service?

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LionRoar
If someone starts about Dark Web, VPN and privacy and then states: "so if a
request for your data is legitimate, F Secure will not stop a proper
investigation from the authorities" it renders it immediately completely
useless in my opinion.

As the last year proofs authorities are the ones that do the snooping. So if
it doesn't protect us from them, what's the point of such a service. Also
linking to Facebook and Skydrive that have government-backdoors seems not so
private to me.

Does F-Secure really understand in which world we live in today? Oh well,
neither do I, back to my coffee.

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state
It seems to me that the best way to launch a product for the "dark web" would
be to just release the code.

~~~
polarix
Yes. Systems making such claims that are not self-hosted are worse than
worthless.

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frank_boyd
I welcome all efforts to fight the abuse taken as granted by the
government(s).

On the other hand:

> a virtual private network (VPN) smartphone app

"smartphone app": for iOS and/or Android, I suppose. Can we trust anything
that does _not_ run on an open-source OS? Absolutely not.

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Numberwang
Younited and Jottacloud? Come on my Scandinavian neighbors, those names are
horrible.

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D9u
Unfortunately Younited doesn't support unix-like systems which aren't Mac...
We'll see how it goes, but I'm not going to install Windows or OS X.

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nl
"Dropbox" has become generic term now?

~~~
chongli
It's been a generic term for far longer than the company's been around.

~~~
nl
Not in the "software that syncs files" sense of the word (which is of course a
pretty important distinction under trademark law).

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eps
Is this a re-launch of Younited?

Just looked at its website and I can swear I saw it before, not long ago.

~~~
woof
They have to launch it before they can do a re-launch:)

This was news late september btw.

