
Ask HN: What encrypted Dropbox alternative do you use? - networked
Are you happy with it?
======
lyk
Keybase. It's a pretty great overall service, with its encrypted virtual file
system being just one of them.

~~~
mftrhu
Last time I used it the kbfs required an Internet connection, have things
changed?

------
_l5su
Rclone + its encryption + Google Drive business account is the best option
I've seen so far. Unlimited for $10/month since they don't enforce limits on
single user accounts yet.

Some alternatives I see here and the reason I don't use them:

SpiderOak: I've written extensively about this [0]. TL;DR: It's slow as hell
and they're utterly unmotivated to fix it. It's slow enough that I consider it
unusable. Fine for one off documents, nothing else.

Syncthing/Resilio/Nextcloud: I'd have to provide my own storage.

Dropbox/AWS/GCP/Azure/Tarsnap/Rsync.net: Too expensive.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306353)

------
aey
why would you trust someone else to encrypt your files? I use dropbox and this
makefile

    
    
      %.enc:%
        openssl aes-256-cbc -a -salt -in $< -out $@
    
      %:%.enc
        openssl aes-256-cbc -d -a -in $< -out $@
    

just not in the shared directory :)

~~~
natch
What is going on here? I tried storing that in a file "Makefile" and created a
file called 'foo', then did:

    
    
        $ make foo.enc
    

The output was:

    
    
        make: Circular Makefile.enc <- Makefile dependency dropped.
        make: Circular foo <- foo.enc dependency dropped.
        openssl aes-256-cbc -a -salt -in foo -out foo.enc
        enter aes-256-cbc encryption password:
    

After putting in a password it did encrypt the file, but there's a lot of
noise in my output, so maybe I'm doing it wrong. Any clues?

~~~
aey
well, thats because the rules are for both encrypting and decrypting.

    
    
      %.enc:%
    
      %:%.enc
    

In one file. So enc -> file -> enc. You can split them out, so encrypt in one
makefile and decrypt in another.

    
    
      make -f Encrypt foo.enc
      make -f Decrypt foo
    

but thats been bugging me as well, so here is an all in one

    
    
      $E:
        openssl aes-256-cbc -a -salt -in $(patsubst %.enc,%,$@) -out $@
    
      $D:
        openssl aes-256-cbc -d -a -in $@.enc -out $@
    
      make E=foo.enc
      make D=foo
    

use make at your own peril :)

------
lazyeye
Resilio sync. It's almost identical to Dropbox except with encryption.

[https://www.resilio.com/individuals/](https://www.resilio.com/individuals/)

~~~
n3d1m
Dropbox uses encryption.

~~~
sabarasaba
And also shares your keys with the NSA.

------
jkmcf
I’ve been using BoxCryptor on top of google drive. The hard decision was
deciding whether to use a fringe[1] service with dedicated encryption or one
of the big 3 and encrypt locally.

I switched from Dropbox to Google Drive, and store encrypted things with
boxcryptor, essentially getting the best of both worlds.

[1] from spider oak to keybase, they are smaller businesses with smaller
adoption, and aren’t supported by almost any mobile apps. iOS Files app might
make this better.

------
publicarray
Cryptomator.org inside iCloud. I like it because I'm responsible for the
password. There is no password reset feature.

Also a +1 for Keybase.

------
aiNohY6g
A mix of syncthing (for distributed secure storage, opensource,
[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)) and mega.nz (with its CLI
tools to share files securely, [http://mega.nz/](http://mega.nz/)).

~~~
thermalgobshite
This is exactly what I do as well.

------
gcthomas
Spideroak. I've had issues with silently maxing out the storage, leaving me
unable to access the account to delete files. Having to resort to the Bash
command line isn't too user friendly, but I like the service otherwise. Zero
knowledge encryption is an essential feature to hove nowadays.

------
sysread
I've used cryptomator in the past but it still feels like it needs a bit more
testing and polish before I'd be confident in using it for personal file
security.

Boxcryptor has the feel of an incredibly brittle app. I'd hate to be the one
who had to maintain that thing.

Tresorit is wonderful if you're rich.

I've settled on pcloud. Adding end to end encryption is an add on service but
inexpensive and dependable. They also offer background backups of your social
media accounts, downloading and storing all of the photos you've uploaded to
fb, Instagram, Google photos, and even doing full Google drive backups.

------
alphabettsy
Cryptomator on top of iCloud and Dropbox. Also Boxcryptor on Dropbox.

------
Steppschuh
Bdrive[1] is end to end encrypted and implemented as RAIC of different cloud
storage providers. It's currently a B2B only solution provided by the
Bundesdruckerei (German federal printing office).

Disclaimer: I work for a software engineering company related to the
Bundesdruckerei.

[1] [https://www.bundesdruckerei.de/en/About-
us/Innovations/BDriv...](https://www.bundesdruckerei.de/en/About-
us/Innovations/BDrive-Story)

------
kirubakaran
Spider Oak

~~~
whamlastxmas
Same. I'm unhappy with how so slow their web interface is but really you
shouldn't be using it.

------
sandGorgon
Tarsnap - [https://www.tarsnap.com/](https://www.tarsnap.com/) Online backups
for the truly paranoid

best part is the deduplication efficiency -
[https://www.tarsnap.com/deduplication.html](https://www.tarsnap.com/deduplication.html)

~~~
dewey
That’s not really a Dropbox alternative as it’s not made for sharing.

------
cclements
Nextcloud, it's great.

~~~
ohiovr
Yunohost makes it easy to implement (done in a few clicks). And yunohost has a
really nice github clone (Gogs if you haven't heard of it). Yunohost itself is
super easy to get working and even has a raspberry pi version. Debian based:)

------
phs2501
Dropbox and encfs. There's a Windows client for it too if you need access
there ([http://www.getsafe.org/](http://www.getsafe.org/)).

------
Nerada
Least Authority/Tahoe-LAFS

They call it S4, but it's basically a client side encryption front-end for
Amazon's S3 for $25/month and unlimited storage.

------
alekna
I use EncFS with gsutil -m sync to backup encrypted data to the cloud

I dont't trust closed source binaries like Dropbox and others.

------
sidcool
Google Drive, Tarsnap, SpiderOak

~~~
hoveringcto
Google Drive has built in encryption? Or are you encrypting before uploading?

~~~
TheGrumpyBrit
rclone supports encrypted Google Drive folders.

------
sigsergv
Resilio Sync + encfs, works fine on macos and linux, not sure about windows
though.

------
chrisked
Boxcryptor

------
tmikaeld
pCloud, 2TB + encryption for 250$ for a lifetime now at Christmas, hard to
beat considering their speeds (200Mbit).

The only caveat is that sending many small files is slower than large
(50Mbit).

------
hlieberman
borgbackup + rsync.net. I'm very happy.

------
foobarbazetc
An encrypted sparsebundle in a Dropbox.

------
emerged
Google Drive with BitLocker VHDs

------
NuSkooler
ownCloud and never looked back

------
gergely
tresorit

------
coolspot
Mega.co.nz

Dropbox + encfs

------
suicideMime
why no one talks about veracrypt and TrueCrypt?

------
FuckOffNeemo
Sync.com

------
geezk7
Transparent File Cryptography with EasyPG

[https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/keeping-secrets-in-
em...](https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/keeping-secrets-in-emacs-gnupg-
auth-sources)

------
lowry
Restic to cold Google Cloud Storage, 5€ per Tb.

