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I'm a digital nomad, and I decided I wanted to store all of my data as securely as possible without relying on Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple. Here's my setup, i
by yosito 5y ago
I'm a digital nomad, and I decided I wanted to store all of my data as securely as possible without relying on Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple. Here's my setup, in case anyone finds it useful.
I store all of my data in Nextcloud hosted on a VPS. It's virtually impossible to guarantee the security of data on a running VPS, so my sensitive data is also encrypted with Cryptomator, so I don't have to trust my VPS host (but I also chose my VPS host carefully with data privacy and security as my main criteria). My host makes daily backups of the VPS off-site, and I also backup my Nextcloud data directory daily to Tardigrade/Storj DCS via their s3 API using Restic. An advantage of Storj DCS is that it's geographically distributed, so you're insulated from natural disasters. I also sync all of my Nextcloud data to both of my laptops, and use Restic to make another backup snapshot on an external USB SSD once a month. My Docker configs for Nextcloud are stored on GitHub, but I wouldn't have trouble recreating them if I somehow lost them.
For my own personal risk model, I think my sensitive data is pretty well protected from third parties, and I think all of my data is reliably backed up accounting for multiple types of failure. My biggest vulnerability is probably my password manager, where all of my encryption keys and passwords are stored.
If anyone has any suggestions on how I can improve my setup, or any potential problems you see, I'd love it if you share!
- aborsy 5y agoI have heard of Cryptomator, but haven’t looked into its code. Has anyone looked into cryptography in Cryptomator? It’s a Java app, and uses Java Cryptography Extension JCE. But I found limited information about JCE. It was audited, but audits don’t mention some important aspects.
- tbronchain 5y agoWondering something, if you are using cryptomator and a VPS - so you don't own your data and use a higher level encryption - why not using the cloud storage services (i.e Dropbox, icloud etc.) ?
- onefuncman 5y agoI put my 1Password vault on Dropbox specifically because I can install both apps via iOS store on a new phone and bootstrap my setup with just 2 passwords. iCloud is actually too hard to recover in case of hardware loss, I don't recommend it to anyone.
- yosito 5y agoThere are two reasons I don't use Dropbox, iCloud, etc. First, I want to be able to use open source, audited clients that allow me to access my data in a transparent and flexible way on all of my devices. I don't want to use a closed source sync client that doesn't give me full control over how my data is synced. Second, and more important, if you don't control your encryption keys, you don't control your data. Storing my data on a VPS doesn't mean that I don't own it. I still have full control over it, and if the VPS disappears, I still have redundant copies.