Has anyone around MCS tried out Spider-Oak yet? one of my buddies is switching from DropBox to Spider-Oak, due to some rather ugly privacy problems that DB seems to have. Apparently, it’s more secure and you get more storage, but I figured I’d get the Hive Mind’s thoughts on it before I move anything.
Sign up and let me know how you feel about it?
Never heard of Spider Oak but I didn’t know about Dropbox’s privacy issues either (and still don’t).
I need something with cross-platform support (I use it across all my & my fiance’s devies from iOS to Android to Windows to Apple) so ease of use is important to me.
Frankly, I try not to get too hung up on Privacy concerns…unless they’re outright sharing my files with the world, I don’t give a shit.
I’m also in the advertising business so your data helps me making a living, so that must have something to do with it. But honestly, aside from getting your credit card stolen, if some bloke in a cube farm happens to know what me and MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of people like me to buy so they could deliver relevant ads with targeted discounts that I’ll most likely ignore, for the free use of vital services, it’s a small cost.
Also, the last thing you want is Spider Oak to go out of business and leave you hanging or worse, you lose valuable files you forgot to backup because they have a weird, non-memorable name or lacks the revenue for a decent advertising budget to grow their product base.
Here’s what happened privacy-wise:
If you get ahold of someone’s computer with Dropbox installed, the privacy issue arises because you can copy all the authentication data (apparently it was installed in plaintext in the past but that has changed)… but IMHO as soon as you have lost physical protection you’re fucked six ways from Sunday anyways… but otherwise I’m fairly sure Dropbox uses client-to-client AES256 to encrypt your shit which is rated good enough for US Top Secret anyways (if TrueCrypt’s factual accuracy is to be trusted). IN ANY CASE if you’re worried enough that your SUPER SECRET stuff on DROPBOX (they already have it, it would be easier to get at if they just asked Dropbox to hand it over) will be intercepted… just encrypt the files before uploading them. Unnecessary? Yes. Soothes fears? Yes. Your call. Listen: Dropbox doesn’t encrypt your files when they get to THEIR servers sure but why would they? If they get accused of facilitating filesharing they can find out who and fix it. It’s just a way of allowing law enforcement to serve warrants when they’re due, and consequently just passively prevent people from accessing your stuff. So yes, that might be a problem.
For similar reasons to the_duck I waited for a while before creating a Dropbox account… and now it’s pretty much the reason I can go anywhere with Internet and still be able to work without my computer. In any case I’m sticking with Dropbox until I start wearing a tinfoil hat because I have over 8 Gigs from referrals (up to 16 GB) and that space is great. As far as I can tell Dropbox is also more user-friendly and all features but the on-board encryption/end-to-end protection is the only feature that’s extra to SpiderOak.
So I installed it and it looks okay, but nowhere near as clean and simple… to use and understand.. as Dropbox.
That was just my take on this.
I’ll sign up, but I’m not using your referral link you crafty whore!
I can’t give up my free-for-life 11gb on Dropbox for 2gb on Spider. (Thanks to Lifehacker):
lifehacker.com/5854955/how-to-max-out-your-dropbox-referrals-with-google-adwords-for-free
If your really worried about the security of your files:
lifehacker.com/5794486/how-to-add-a-second-layer-of-encryption-to-dropbox
*lifehacker whore*