3 ms·

Enlightening (and scary) stuff. Encryption is great but won't save you if they ask for your password (honestly, I'd prefer to give them the password and circum

Enlightening (and scary) stuff. Encryption is great but won't save you if they ask for your password (honestly, I'd prefer to give them the password and circumvent using online storage.) With that in mind - what advice would all you security buffs have on the best way to back up your hard drive to an online disk? Specifically using a basic hosting account as opposed to SAAS or cloud service?

po 15y ago
I actually trust tarsnap more than setting up a host and having to maintain it: http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/
- josscrowcroft 15y ago
  Looks very interesting, as services go. For this kind of thing, I'm strangely less inclined to trust a slick-looking, well-designed and heavily-marketed backup "solution".. If I do fork out for a service, I would probably rather go with the kind of company that has as their tagline: "Online backups for the truly paranoid", like them. Pricing's not a killer either.
  - po 15y ago
    This service is run by a long time hacker news user and security researcher cperciva. Read his stuff: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva http://www.daemonology.net/blog/ http://www.daemonology.net/blog/
  - merijnv 15y ago
    The reason I trust (to the extend I trust anything on this planet) Tarsnap is that Colin Percival (the creator) is a cryptographer and the FreeBSD security officer. Leading to me have a higher confidence in him than most of the other "secure" backup services I have seen.
    - josscrowcroft 15y ago
      Yeah that's what I mean - it looks more trustworthy than something over-designed with 5 carefully-crafted price plans. Think I'll give it a shot soon. Thanks!
      - polymatter 15y ago
        and when there was a critical security bug in Tarsnap, he behaved with extraordinary integrity and openness (http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-critical-security-bug.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-critical-...). More than anything else, cpercival earned my trust simply by being honest. There are precious few companies I could say this about.

po 15y ago

I actually trust tarsnap more than setting up a host and having to maintain it: http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/

josscrowcroft 15y ago
Looks very interesting, as services go. For this kind of thing, I'm strangely less inclined to trust a slick-looking, well-designed and heavily-marketed backup "solution".. If I do fork out for a service, I would probably rather go with the kind of company that has as their tagline: "Online backups for the truly paranoid", like them. Pricing's not a killer either.
- po 15y ago
  This service is run by a long time hacker news user and security researcher cperciva. Read his stuff: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva http://www.daemonology.net/blog/ http://www.daemonology.net/blog/
- merijnv 15y ago
  The reason I trust (to the extend I trust anything on this planet) Tarsnap is that Colin Percival (the creator) is a cryptographer and the FreeBSD security officer. Leading to me have a higher confidence in him than most of the other "secure" backup services I have seen.
  - josscrowcroft 15y ago
    Yeah that's what I mean - it looks more trustworthy than something over-designed with 5 carefully-crafted price plans. Think I'll give it a shot soon. Thanks!
    - polymatter 15y ago
      and when there was a critical security bug in Tarsnap, he behaved with extraordinary integrity and openness (http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-critical-security-bug.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-critical-...). More than anything else, cpercival earned my trust simply by being honest. There are precious few companies I could say this about.