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> What are people forced to do now because what you plan to make doesn't exist yet? > Email themselves attachments. For me, that was the killer feature that g

by ra 16y ago

> What are people forced to do now because what you plan to make doesn't exist yet? > Email themselves attachments. For me, that was the killer feature that got me hooked 2+ years ago. Today we use Dropbox for so much more. It's become the ultimate networked drive that takes advantage of your local hard disk. The one feature I wish it had was encryption.

jodrellblank 16y ago
I understand the wish for encryption, but once you've put your encrypted dropbox in the cloud, it's there forever. If anyone is going to break the encryption it's going to be: 1) Someone with massive computing power (e.g. cloud based) 2) Someone with a long time to work on it Who's to say DropBox wouldn't setup background processes to brute force encryption keys? Who's to say your encryption keys might not be trivial to brute force 10 years from now? And if you use password protected documents you can't change your encryption key because they can always look at a previous version where the key was different. More to the point, if you don't trust them to store your data, why would you trust their encryption? If they were malicious (and I'm not claiming anything) they would deliberately weaken the encryption 'accidentally' and you would likely never know.
- ra 16y ago
  If the dropbox client encrypted all files using a shared secret known only to myself, then my files would be protected by an additional layer of security where I manage the keys, that makes a lot of difference. Obviously there is no such thing as absolute security, but that's not a reason not to take protective measures.
  - nodata 16y ago
    How would the dropbox client encrypt the files if only you knew the shared secret? You have to give the client your shared secret, and then we're back to where we began.
    - ra 16y ago
      No because the client is on my machine. See how truecrypt works if you want to understand this.
- shykes 16y ago
  In the real world, DB's servers are more likely to be breached than file-level encryption, by orders of magnitude. So encryption would be a very welcome addition. Unfortunately it has a very real cost for DB: data redundancy could no longer be leveraged to save storage (because 2 identical files would appear different to DB). I suspect at their level of scale that would move a few cells in their CFO's spreadsheet.
sweis 16y ago
You can create a TrueCrypt volume or Mac encrypted disk image in your Dropbox folder: http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/IncreasePrivacyAndSafety http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/IncreasePrivacyAndSafe... This reduces the usability of syncing and sharing, which are Dropbox's biggest selling points. Tarsnap is an alternative if you just want encrypted backup: http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/
- ra 16y ago
  Sure, I actually use both Truecrypt and Tarsnap for other things. They are both excellent tools, but Dropbox with client-side encryption they are not.

by ra 16y ago

jodrellblank 16y ago

I understand the wish for encryption, but once you've put your encrypted dropbox in the cloud, it's there forever. If anyone is going to break the encryption it's going to be: 1) Someone with massive computing power (e.g. cloud based) 2) Someone with a long time to work on it Who's to say DropBox wouldn't setup background processes to brute force encryption keys? Who's to say your encryption keys might not be trivial to brute force 10 years from now? And if you use password protected documents you can't change your encryption key because they can always look at a previous version where the key was different. More to the point, if you don't trust them to store your data, why would you trust their encryption? If they were malicious (and I'm not claiming anything) they would deliberately weaken the encryption 'accidentally' and you would likely never know.

ra 16y ago
If the dropbox client encrypted all files using a shared secret known only to myself, then my files would be protected by an additional layer of security where I manage the keys, that makes a lot of difference. Obviously there is no such thing as absolute security, but that's not a reason not to take protective measures.
- nodata 16y ago
  How would the dropbox client encrypt the files if only you knew the shared secret? You have to give the client your shared secret, and then we're back to where we began.
  - ra 16y ago
    No because the client is on my machine. See how truecrypt works if you want to understand this.
shykes 16y ago
In the real world, DB's servers are more likely to be breached than file-level encryption, by orders of magnitude. So encryption would be a very welcome addition. Unfortunately it has a very real cost for DB: data redundancy could no longer be leveraged to save storage (because 2 identical files would appear different to DB). I suspect at their level of scale that would move a few cells in their CFO's spreadsheet.

sweis 16y ago

You can create a TrueCrypt volume or Mac encrypted disk image in your Dropbox folder: http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/IncreasePrivacyAndSafety http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/IncreasePrivacyAndSafe... This reduces the usability of syncing and sharing, which are Dropbox's biggest selling points. Tarsnap is an alternative if you just want encrypted backup: http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/

ra 16y ago
Sure, I actually use both Truecrypt and Tarsnap for other things. They are both excellent tools, but Dropbox with client-side encryption they are not.