The account is needed so you can grant authorization to others to access your files. EncFS is great if you are the only user. If you want to grant others access

The account is needed so you can grant authorization to others to access your files. EncFS is great if you are the only user. If you want to grant others access to your encrypted files, you need an authorization / authentication mechanism, which is why there's an account needed - for permission control. But if you're the only user / potential accessor of the files, single-user strong file-system based encryption works.