Ask HN: Secure Alternatives to Dropbox

14 points by minm ↗ HN
Please provide us with your recommendations

Consolidating suggestions here:

1. http://www.tonido.com/

2. http://owncloud.org/

3. https://www.aerofs.com/

4. http://www.bitcasa.com/

5. https://spideroak.com/

6. http://www.sparkleshare.org

19 comments

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owncloud?
Can we run owncloud in windows? Looks interesting. Thanks
Bitcasa? AeroFS? (Both currently in Beta, the former in public beta, the latest in private beta).
Googledrive?
How it is more secure than dropbox?
I recommend Tonido. You can do private sync without relying on online cloud storage systems like dropbox and drive.
Looks interesting. Thanks for the suggestion
http://spideroak.com/faq/ = cross-platform, client-side encryption / decryption note for clarify - not associated with Spideroak in anyway, just a happy home user (100GB) and I've introduced it at work (2GB free account). Considered and rejected were google drive (privacy concerns), and I've moved away from Carbonite (also for privacy reasons).
Microsoft live mesh
Is it not skydrive now?
Cofounder of SpiderOak here. We started in 2007, have always supported all platforms, and have a zero knowledge privacy policy about encryption of customer data. Looking at stored customer data is very boring for our sysadmins because they can't see anything on the server except sequentially numbered encrypted data blocks.

Also, you can backup/sync/share arbitrary folders.

SparkleShare is something you host yourself, and uses a git backend (or its own). So it is as secure as you can manage it. (or secure as you can keep the keys with smudge/clean encryption filters).

Alternatively, use a git provider such as github as a backend - I'm not sure "secure" is the right description, though, if you do that.

What aspect of security are you referring to or do you just mean overall?

I have been using mediacloud ( http://mediacloud.cc/ ) for the past few months and I've been very impressed with it. They have built-in file acceleration to give you the maximum upload speeds your network allows. I've been using it to upload files anywhere from 1mb to 20gb and have never had a problem.

As for security I know they use AES256 SSL, but again, am not sure which aspect of security you are interested in.

getcloudapp.com? I've been using it since the very start, never experienced any problems. Native Mac app, alternatives for Windows and as well free apps for all iOS deviced. Couldn't ask for more, really.
I am looking into dropbox alternatives, and from the above I chose to try owncloud and aeorofs.

1. Tonido is out of the game, because the file syncing is limited (2 GB) so it is useless for me.

2. OwnCloud looks very good. I am going to try it..

3. AeroFS - In theory what I need (but unlike onwcloud is not open source) but in reality the experience was terrible - sometimes it didnt sync my files for no apparent reason, sometimes it eats too much memory.. I didnt like the experience very much..

4. Bitcasa seems too magical, I dont know how it works, I dont trust it..

5. Spideroak looks just like another dropbox, dont need that..

6. Sparkleshare is good idea, but using GIT as syncing mechanism means that it is not suitable for media files, so it is out of game for me..

So my hopes are with OwnCloud :)