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Comment by john2x | Hacker News Reader

There should have been 2 options for "I continue to use Dropbox despite being against the appointment of Rice" and "I continue to use Dropbox, with no opinion about the Board".

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How about one for "I dropped DropBox in favour of an option with client side encryption"?

Wuala, SpiderOak, even GDrive/DropBox + EncFS/Ecryptfs/BoxCryptor. So many better options than DropBox for those of us with privacy concerns.

And for the more DIY people, there's OwnCloud, git-annex assistant (which supports encrypted remotes!), SyncThing and TahoeLAFS. Anyone know of a good sync client for TahoeLAFS though?

What you really want is "I dropped Dropbox for an unrelated reason". The poll is trying to determine whether the call to boycott dropbox due to Condi Rice's appointment actually got anywhere. The OP's suggested answers would make it easier to answer the original question. Your answer, as I see it, would just add noise.

Yeah, I'm just not sure why anyone would drop it over that specific appointment. It's already clear that DropBox can read your files for shits and giggles.

If you have privacy concerns, you're going to pick something where that's not possible anyways.

Maybe someone can explain this to me - is it just partisan political crap?

I dropped them due to the Rice appointment. Granted, this decision was made much easier by the fact that I rarely used dropbox and had nothing important stored there (mainly photos from stuff I was selling on craigslist).

Also, definitely a partisan decision on my part. I'm sure if the appointment was a "liberal/democrat" with a similar record of facilitating NSA snooping, etc, I'd find a way to justify not dropping dropbox.

At the time the appointment was announced there was a fair bit of outrage, and a big call to action around boycotting dropbox over it. It seems like following up on that call to action is actually a pretty interesting thing to do.

That makes sense. Added.

I don't see BitTorrent Sync in your list of alternatives. I've not used it myself, but I've heard good things about it. I just wonder if it's secure at all, given the open nature of BitTorrent itself.

BitTorrent Sync is not open source or even open protocol and I personally caught them lying about their cryptography by reverse engineering it a bit. Found calls setting up 128 bit AES rather than 256 bit as they claimed in documentation. Posted it on their forum and was told that I was correct and the docs were outdated.

I didn't take my RE any deeper, but trust it at your own risk. I'd recommend SyncThing over it as a good open alternative, though it's admittedly not as polished yet.

Admittedly I am listing several closed tools, but only those I've had good experiences with.

Thanks, that helps. I was wary of it in the first place, but now I know I'll stay away.

I do love the idea of OwnCloud, and I've tried it a few times in the past. But it almost feels like they are paying more attention to making a "virtual web desktop" with the new file editing stuff, and less attention to proper file syncing. I've tried to use them for syncing in the past on my CoLo file server, and on a fast machine in my home, and it's just too slow and buggy for now. I wish I was a competent programmer so I could contribute in that department.

Late edit: I just realized you took my statement about BitTorrent's "open nature" to mean open source or protocol. I apologize, I didn't mean it that way and should have worded it better. What I meant was "open for all to see what you're transferring". Basically, the contents would be easy to snoop from what I understand. Sorry about any confusion.

Looks like the BitTorrent Sync specs have been updated http://www.bittorrent.com/sync/tech-specs

Yes, they updated them after I mentioned it. However, it leaves me questioning other things which I didn't look at and overall, I'm just not happy trusting a closed cryptosystem.

I'd be willing to accept closed source if they at least published a cryptographic protocol, but closed source and closed protocol, where I myself have seen that the little bit of vague documentation that they do have has been incorrect in the past, is quite untrustworthy in my opinion.

Considering the number of alternatives available - may as well just use something else. I'll give it another look if they open the protocol in one way or another as they do surely have the ease of use nailed down.

Exactly, I dropped Dropbox for Spideroak after the NSA fiasco and have since moved to Owncloud on my own servers. It works perfectly. I honestly think Owncloud has the nicest desktop client around.

And at the very least "I dropped DropBox for some other reason".

Yep, dropped Dropbox for SpiderOak ages ago due to a number of really poor security failings on Dropbox's part. (Remember the day they accidentally allowed blank passwords to login to anyones account?)

When was that?

Had to look through my emails but it looks like it was in June of 2011.

edit: http://www.geek.com/news/dropbox-security-glitch-meant-any-p...

I did the same when that incident happened.

I dropped Dropbox because Google Drive simply offered a better product in general for cheaper.

Dropbox is probably the LEAST feature-rich and mid-range to high in the cost part , compared to all the other file sharing services out there.

Dropbox's strength is the simple and consistent GUI that's available in all platforms (desktop, mobile and web). I've moved to SpiderOak and it works perfectly for me, but it's not a UI I would recommend to my mother.

I've been using Seafile, who continues to consistently improve the quality of their software. It's still hard to set up for non-technical people, but I think they may offer a hosted service for such individuals.

And to be clear, the actual client you install to make the backups is extremely easy to install and use, it's just the server that can be tricky to set up.

In your first line, you say to drop Dropbox due to lack of client side encryption, and in your second line you mention that you can just roll your own while still using Dropbox...?

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