It does local encryption before sending your data up to the cloud.
Notably Arq restores all macOS permissions/meta-data, and there is an open-source test kit to show whether such a program does so.
It also works on Windows.
I have no relationship with the company, other than as a happy user.
From what I read, you can still offload data from your local machine by choosing to "archive" a directory.
But thats an extra step and I haven't read how it handles conflicting directory that are created in the future after archiving the original.
My goal is just two off-site backups (AWS and Google).
gsutil -m rsync -P -d -r -x "node_modules|tmp|..."-e ~/ gs://you-will-spend-too-much-time-thinking-of-a-clever-bucket-name
(although I should expand it a bit to better handle ignoring stuff by parsing .gitignore)
FQDNs to the rescue, I very much doubt anyone but me is going to call a bucket backups.ninjagiraffes.co.uk (and if someone does so now, well, good trolling)
if you own a domain, only people who pass domain ownership verification can make buckets with that domain suffix.
Combined with https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hosting-static-website it means you can easily host static websites by just populating appropriately named buckets with your domain suffix.
I think this is a very cool feature.
Of course Amazon Cloud Drive looks nice for people who wants to backup their media with little effort. I'm using a bit different approach, I'm backing up my data to a home server, but I need a reliable mirror in case of emergency.
[0] https://cloud.google.com/storage/archival/ - At the bottom
In fact, it's implied they believe Coldline is the biggest new thing they're doing, for it's the first thing in the announcement they discuss in detail. It's certainly got me interested.
"We may use, access, and retain Your Files in order to provide the Services to you, enforce the terms of the Agreement, and improve our services, and you give us all permissions we need to do so. These permissions include, for example, the rights to copy Your Files, modify Your Files to enable access in different formats, use information about Your Files to organize them on your behalf."
that's very scary if they can terminate my service and delete all my binary backups because they did not like binary files.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId...
For comparison, CrashPlan has a similar clause (see section 11)[0].
Ditto Backblaze (see "Our Rights")[1].
I wouldn't be surprised that all "unlimited" consumer products have similar clauses. If this is a concern for you, use a metered product.
[0] https://support.code42.com/Terms_And_Conditions/End_User_Lic...
For our Personal Backup product (fixed $5/month for as much data as you can keep on your laptop) your data is encrypted on your laptop BEFORE UPLOADING to Backblaze, and we have no idea what is inside your files and I assure you we don't want to know. (Look into setting your own private encryption key if you are worried at all about this.) In our 10 year history we have never once removed a customer's file because we objected to the file contents in that customer's Personal Backup because we simply don't know what is in the files.
For our other product line (B2 Cloud Storage for half a penny per GByte per month) the problem is you can have a "Private" bucket at which point we absolutely DO NOT care what you store. But if you have a "Public" bucket that is a public website. If you have public bucket serving up illegal content such as a phishing website or sharing bootleg songs or movies that you do not have legal rights to share, then we may shut you down (turn the bucket "Private" so nobody but you can get the data).
TL;DR - use our Personal Backup product or a "Private" bucket and store WHATEVER YOU WANT. But if you break the law serving up a website from Backblaze we have an obligation to shut you down.