6 ms·
The only ones that actually have your back are those that use encryption to make data collecting impossible.
by ywecur 11y ago
The only ones that actually have your back are those that use encryption to make data collecting impossible.
- jacquesm 11y agoThis is about requests for stored data and then the encryption is moot, that mostly affects data in-flight or seized computers if the data is stored. In the latter case you will probably be forced to cough up the decryption keys.
- icebraining 11y agoHence cperciva's "Playing chicken with cat.jpg": http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-with-cat-jpg.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w... When we're talking about protection against government data requests, only companies that make sure they have access to the absolute minimum client information they possible can do truly have our backs. Everyone else just has good intentions.
- jacquesm 11y agoColin has it right. If you don't want to ever compromise your clients data make sure you can't read any of it. It's that simple. Anything else simply won't do. That's why I keep recommending tarsnap to customers.
- stephenr 11y agoOr you could.. you know... recommend an appropriate client-side encryption tool so they can then store the archive/backup data on the storage provider of their choice...
- frankzinger 11y agoThe advantage of having client-side encryption built into tarsnap is that it encrypts only after data deduplication and compression. Obviously there could be a tarsnap option to stream the data to be uploaded through an encryption program of your choice, but doing it just as you suggest would nerf a few of tarsnap's prime advantages.
- stephenr 11y agoI think you've misunderstood me. Tarsnap is a combination client-side application and remote service. I am suggesting instead to use/recommend one of the existing client-side tools that work similar to the tarsnap client does, but don't lock the user into a single service provider. By using a client-side tool that just generates archives (and isn't tied to a single storage service provider), you can store them anywhere - AWS, iCloud, Google Drive, Rsync.net, a rented VPS, a friends computer, an external hard drive, all of the above. You name it.
- frankzinger 11y agoI understood what you said, I just didn't know that there were tools in existence that are as good as or better than tarsnap at the archiving part which allow you to specify the storage location. Edit: I used 'specify the storage location' very loosely. I.e., I realise it could mean simply piping the archive data to yet another program in the shell.
- stephenr 11y agoMostly these tools would expect a local storage location and you'd schedule scp/rsync/whatever to copy to the destination of your choice.
- frankzinger 11y agoCool, could you please give me a few examples?
- icebraining 11y agoI've never used it, but I've seen people on HN recommend Attic. It dedups and encrypts. https://attic-backup.org https://attic-backup.org Personally, I use git-annex, which isn't exactly a backup tool but a general distributed file manager which can, among other things, automatically make encrypted copies of the files to various places (SSH servers, S3, Google Drive, etc).
- ywecur 11y ago>In the latter case you will probably be forced to cough up the decryption keys. Not if you make the users password the key.
- xahrepap 11y agoI've always wondered, what do you do in the case of a user forgets their password and has to reset it? Reset it and lose all their data? Seems like the only way.
- sqeaky 11y agoIf a group planned ahead they could give out some secondary kind of key. Gmail gives out these really long codes I can use to login should I not have the authenticator app.
- arunbahl 11y agoOS X's whole-disk encryption (FileVault 2) similarly creates a recovery key at encrypt-time.
- lewisl9029 11y agoSorry, I might be missing something here, but would there be any tangible differences between the service provider having access to a secondary key vs them having access to the primary key if both can be used to access your data? I'm honestly interested because I'm building a distributed system where only the user has the decryption key, and I've always just assumed that password recovery is a lost cause in such systems.
- stephenr 11y agoI would assume the recovery key is not stored in plain-text - it's likely hashed, similar to a password. If you need to use it, you enter the (hopefully safely stored) recovery key you have, they re-hash it and compare to the hashed one they keep.
- 11y ago