Dropbox alternatives?

[Mike_TX]

If I have a Dropbox cloud storage account, should I leave it?

I know there are some IT people at CHT Forum and thought I'd ask.
Is this a real issue or just hype?


Site:
Dropbox

https://www.dropbox.com

Many people consider Dropbox the baseline product/service to emulate and beat for syncing and storing data in the cloud, despite a recent security issue and the announcement of a related class action lawsuit.
Giving you access options for nearly every popular desktop and mobile OS variant and version, Dropbox makes your data accessible from anywhere you can get Internet access.
Your changed files are instantly backed up to the cloud and to all connected sync points.

- InformationWeek - link


Issue:

We wanted to let you know that we've made some changes to the Dropbox Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Security Overview. We did this to make our policies easier to read and understand, and better reflect product improvements we've made to Dropbox.

Please read about these changes in our blog post, and read the docs themselves:
TOS
Privacy Policy
Security Overview
We welcome feedback on the changes at [email protected]. Please note that by continuing to use Dropbox, you agree to our new TOS which will be effective on July 15th, 2011.

- The Dropbox Team

Alternatives
40 alternatives
– no info on terms of service (TOS) - some outdated

http://www.w3mag.com/2010/04/09/file-storage-sites/

5 Dropbox Alternatives For Cloud Storage - link


One "hot" alternative that I've heard suggested:
SpiderOak
For: security, backup, share, sync, mobile

https://spideroak.com

https://spideroak.com/engineering_matters#true_privacy

https://spideroak.com/whyspideroak

With full file versioning and the combining of sync, sharing, and backup into one service, SpiderOak deserves a serious look for those whose top concern is security. Bottom Line: SpiderOak offers everything that Dropbox does, but with better service offerings and benefits, plus a superior price point.

- InformationWeek - link


Since I already have a dropbox account I'd rather just keep it, but wanted to query this group....


Thanks,

Mike


*ADDENDUM*
Other mentions:

Microsoft Mesh
Sugarsync -- https://www.sugarsync.com/

Lists
[LifeHacker 7-7-11] Dropbox vs. the Alternatives: Which Online Syncing Service Is Right for You?
.

[Mike_TX]

Dropbox - Changes to our policies (updated)

Dropbox blog post: http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=846
7/1/11

Changes to our policies (updated)
Posted by Drew and Arash on July 01, 2011
Hi Dropboxers,

Today we revised our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Security Overview. We’re in the process of emailing every user to let you know about these changes. These updates are meant to make all our policies clearer and more transparent to you.

So what did we change?

First, we’ve made all three of these docs easier to read and understand. We worked hard to eliminate as much “legalese” as possible. We actually want you to read them!

Second, we’ve tried to make them better reflect a few important beliefs we have as a company by adding more detail on privacy and security. The trust placed in us by millions of people to keep their valuable data safe is the most important asset we have. Security is a responsibility we take very seriously and a topic we want users to understand. We also want users to understand that information about how people use Dropbox is really important to helping us build a better product. So, we believe you should know what data we collect and store, and we want to be upfront and honest about how we use it.

Here are a few changes we wanted to call out specifically:

1.) Encryption keys – Dropbox manages encryption keys for you. The reason is many of the most popular Dropbox features — like accessing your files from the website, creating file previews, and sharing files with other people — would either be impossible or would be much more cumbersome for users without this capability. But we’re also ok if you want to manage your own encryption by using products like TrueCrypt with Dropbox. We’ve discussed this publicly in the past, but we added this information to our security overview so it’s easy to find.

2.) Data practices – People love Dropbox because it lets them take their life’s work everywhere. And we want you to be in control of that work, including your decisions to delete it. So we added a section to our privacy policy to describe our data retention policies. If you delete your account, we try to delete your data quickly, but there are some rare cases where we can’t, which are outlined in the privacy policy.

3.) Location & log data – Data on how people use Dropbox helps us create a better user experience. We want to be clear about how we collect and use that data, so we’ve explained it in our privacy policy. For example, we collect information such as your country, operating system and the hardware ID from your device. This data allows us to optimize your experience for your device and language.

4.) De-duplication – We’re always working to make Dropbox more efficient. For example, we may de-duplicate files, which means we store only one copy of files or pieces of files that are the same. This has been discussed for a long time in our forums, in interviews and in response to user emails, but we want to spell it out further for you and have added it to our privacy policy.

5.) Mobile encryption – Your life should be as secure on the go as it is at your desk, so our goal is to encrypt all data transmitted to our mobile apps. For example, we’ve rolled out updates to our mobile apps last month that encrypt metadata during transmission. Not every mobile media player supports encrypted streams though, so we’ve changed our security overview to reflect that.

We’ve tried to present these three docs in plain language and hope that our edits have made them easier to read and understand. Please send us your feedback. All of us at Dropbox appreciate the trust you place in us.

We’ll continue to provide updates as we work to improve Dropbox.

[Update - 7/2] – We asked for your feedback and we’ve been listening. As a result, we’ve clarified our language on licensing:

You retain ownership to your stuff. You are also solely responsible for your conduct, the content of your files and folders, and your communications with others while using the Services.

We sometimes need your permission to do what you ask us to do with your stuff (for example, hosting, making public, or sharing your files). By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission.

[Update 2 - 7/2] – An update based on your feedback:

One of the main reasons we updated our terms of service was to make them easier to read and understand. It seems we’ve mostly accomplished that, which we’re thrilled about.

Some of you have written us with very understandable concerns about the legal-sounding parts. In particular, our new TOS talks about the licenses we need to run Dropbox. We want to be 100% clear that you own what you put in your Dropbox. We don’t own your stuff. And the license you give us is really limited. It only allows us to provide the service to you. Nothing else.

We think it’s really important that you understand the license. It’s about the permissions you give us to run the service, things like creating public links when you ask us to, allowing you to collaborate with colleagues in shared folders, generating web previews or thumbnails of your files, encrypting files, creating backups… the basic things that make Dropbox safe and easy to use. Services like Google Docs and others do the same thing when they get these permissions (see, for example, section 11.1 of Google’s TOS).

We wish we didn’t have to use legal terms at all, but copyright law is complicated and if we don’t get these permissions in writing, we might be putting ourselves in a tough spot down the road. Not to bore you with the details, but please take a look at the license term in the TOS. We think it’s fair and strikes the right balance: “This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services.”

We want to thank everybody who wrote in, understanding your concerns helps us make Dropbox better.

Drew & Arash

[Mike_TX]

More...

2GB free for either

Dropbox - 50GB = $99/yr
SpiderOak - 100GB = $100/yr

SpiderOak Pricing

SpiderOak's philosophy on pricing is simple - backup, synchronize, share, access, and store as much as you like and we will only bill you for the amount of storage used. You can backup, synchronize, and share data across all of your computers, external drives, and/or network volumes - from anywhere and everywhere. And what's better, we offer you 2 GBs free - for life - enjoying all of the features SpiderOak has to offer.

Give SpiderOak a try - you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

SpiderOak Features

Backup, Sync, Share, Access & Storage
Multi Platform Support - Mac, Windows, Linux Compatible
100% Zero-knowledge Privacy
Add any number of computers at NO additional cost
Storage & time saving De-Duplication
Perpetual Deleted File & Historical Version Storage
10-15 Times Faster than traditional backup solutions
Wholly Fault-Tolerant Design

Mike

PS - Just FYI, I have no vested interest in either of these (or any other) cloud storage companies. Just exploring....

[dvenardos]

It depends on what you want to store in dropbox.
When I was looking I liked SpiderOak because when you choose to use your own encryption key, they can't access your data. On the other hand if you lose your encryption key you can't either and there is no way for them to recover it for you. Which I like.

The only other option that I found with the same option for security is CrashPlan, but that is just a backup plan and doesn't have the syncing and online access that DropBox and SpiderOak do. SpiderOak is nice and I installed it for my girlfriend. I just use crashplan for local backups because 2GB wasn't enough for me and I am too cheap for $100/year.

[Jed M]

I have been using Microsoft Mesh lately and it appears to be a pretty good syncing software for free. I now have all my computers completely synced and its a serious productivity booster. My only concern is if one computer gets a virus or deleted it would happen on all my computers so I am going to look into Crash Plan. It looks like a pretty good system for what I need. Thanks for the heads up.

[Toddo97]

Check out Sugarsync https://www.sugarsync.com/. I prefer it to Dropbox--I haven't spent anytime with your other option though.

[Mike_TX]

Check out Sugarsync https://www.sugarsync.com/. I prefer it to Dropbox--I haven't spent anytime with your other option though.

Thanks all.
I'll add them to the list in post #1.

Mike

[cburbs]

I came across this today -

http://lifehacker.com/5818908/dropbox-vs-the-alternatives-which-online-syncing-service-is-right-for-you

[Mike_TX]

Dropbox vs. the Alternatives: Which Online Syncing Service Is Right for You?

I came across this today -
http://lifehacker.com/5818908/dropbo...-right-for-you

Thanks.
I'm reading it now...


Dropbox vs. the Alternatives: Which Online Syncing Service Is Right for You?

Conclusion

As we've mentioned before, you can use multiple online cloud storage services to make the most of the available free space. For your work documents, for example, you might select SpiderOak or Wuala; for streaming music on your mobile phone, SugarSync; to backup files from one computer to another over your local network, Live Mesh; and for everyday files, Dropbox.

If that's too much overhead, however, the decision for which online syncing service is right for you will depend on your priorities: simplicity and third-party support (Dropbox), security (SpiderOak/Wuala), Windows advantages(Live Mesh), or most features and platforms support (SugarSync).

Now that you've seen our thoughts, what's your take on these or other online syncing services?

Mike

PS - Unrelated - Any hotel recs for downtown Portland?

[Mike_TX]

Should you be worried about Dropbox's changing terms of service?

A recent tweet:

lifehacker Lifehacker
Should you be worried about Dropbox's changing terms of service? goo.gl/UOfMi


Should I Be Worried About Dropbox’s Changing Terms of Service?

Dear Lifehacker,
I rely on Dropbox to sync my files between computers like I rely on oxygen for life.
But in the past week I've been hearing that Dropbox is claiming ownership of everything I sync using their service, and well, that doesn't sound good to me.
Two days ago they updated their ToS again, and I'm having trouble wrapping my head around all of this.
Should I be worried about storing my files on Dropbox?
Signed,
Doubting Dropbox

...

(see primary source for links)

The Verdict

Dropbox is trying very hard to make sure you're comfortable storing your stuff in their cloud.
Whether or not you are comfortable with that is up to you.
You've got plenty of good alternatives if you want to take your files elsewhere, though as Klint Finley at ReadWriteWeb points out, most services of the type include similar clauses in their ToS.

These sort of consumer-friendly cloud services are still relatively new, and there are bound to be growing pains as expectations—from both the user and business perspectives—get worked out.
Until they are worked out, you probably shouldn't store anything in Dropbox (or SugarSync or Live Mesh or SpiderOak, etc.) that you don't feel comfortable "licensing" to that service.
For some, that might mean not using these services at all.
For others, that might mean storing your less sensitive files.

Keep in mind that one thing you can do to better secure your stuff on these services is add a second layer of encryption to what you're syncing to them.
Doing so doesn't fix the licensing problem, but it does make your files harder for anyone else to actually use.

Hope that helps!

Love,
Lifehacker

P.S. We're not lawyers or experts in this field, so if you've got a better or more refined point of view, we're all ears in the comments.

[Mike_TX]

SecretSync beta

SecretSync Beta

(I saw this in Computer Power User - July 2011, p.76 -- www.computerpoweruser.com)

Publisher: Completely Private Files
URL: www.completelyprivatefiles.com
ETA: Q3 2011
Why You Should Care: Anyone concerned with privacy and his Dropbox account should be very interested.

Deep privacy for the cloud
As your data heads to the cloud in Web 2.0 and beyond, deep privacy for your data is needed more than ever.
We provide industry-strength encryption services so you can comfortably store your data anywhere.

What we provide
Data-level encryption
We use unbreakable 256-bit AES encryption to ensure that the contents of your data is completely private and secure — only you and those you choose to share with may view the content of your files.

Encryption for collaboration
Easily and confidentially share encrypted files and data with co-workers, clients, and others. Our solutions for collaboration provide a confidential workflow among teams.

Email confidentially
It's common knowledge that standard email is insecure. We provide solutions for sending encrypted documents over email that ensures data is confidential until it reaches its destination.

App For Dropbox:

http://getsecretsync.com

Try out our new app for Dropbox – SecretSync.
Your files are safe since they're encrypted before being sent to Dropbox.

[Mike_TX]

AccountSnap

Another interesting one:


Account Snap

http://www.completelyprivatefiles.com/services/ak/

AccountSnap Gadget for Gmail is a free Java application that lets you manage your accounts and passwords from Gmail.

Your records are stored in a special encrypted file inside Google Docs, and 128-bit AES encryption is used to ensure that your account data never leaves your computer without being encrypted first.