I took the liberty of making the changes shown in bold. I think it works better. I'd just like to mention one thing that the typical cloud storage user probably never thinks about but that TSOs would think about. Even in cases where files are encrypted/decrypted locally... even in those (rare, I think) cases where ALL of the related client software (local encryption/decryption handler, cloud storage provider network protocol handler, etc) is open-source and compiled by the end user them self... there can be less than desirable information flowing to the cloud provider. 1) The owner of the encrypted information is revealed via information acquired when they created their cloud storage account. Possibly because it is somehow linked to another account for which personal information is already known. Possibly because they submitted something (well known email address, possibly even client IP Address) which can be used to determine their identity. Etc. 2) The owner of the encrypted information is revealed via other information. Very few people are going to access their cloud storage provider via pseudo-anonymous proxies that hide their client IP Address. Most will routinely communicate with the cloud storage provider from locations of interest (home, work, school, other places they frequent) and those IP Addresses along with publicly available location and address/block owner information can be very helpful in terms of zeroing in on the individual. 3) If you are selectively sharing files with friends/family, the cloud storage provider is in a position to gather information about known associates. Which could also help them zero in on identities. 4) Depending on how various components work and how you use them, meta information about your files (file names, file name length, file creation/modification/access times, file size, and/or file hashes) and/or your usage of those files (when files were created/modified/accessed, which files you modify frequently, which files you share and in which direction, which areas within an encrypted container file are frequently modified, etc) may be revealed to the cloud storage provider. You're probably at greatest risk if the client side software is multi-function, handling all the checking/uploading/downloading and also all the encryption/decryption. Especially if whole file hashes (for file change detection, for conserving cloud storage space, whatever) are used. A hash, particularly if other meta data is appended to it or what was hashed includes some metadata and not just file contents, can tell a cloud provider who has the same files. Which could, in some scenarios, leave you open to indirect types of reveals. For example, someone with the same file shares it via cloud storage provider interface and includes a "here is XYZ version 3".
@guest: And you're stupid enough not to understand what I said about encryption? Good luck recovering your private data once your personal computer fails, gets stolen, (accidentally) destroyed, etc. Unless you're somehow wealthy enough to own an offsite backup location segregated from others (since you're that paranoid).
Has anyone tried CloudSafe? I came across it earlier after reading about some of the options mentioned in this thread. https://secure.cloudsafe.com/
Seeing as "Cloud" is a marketing term. I'm going to interpret this to extend to wireless portable drives. That being said, these would be the best option for remote storage and access. Why? You don't have to deal with server maintenance issues that might make your content inaccessible. You get more storage in my opinion at better rate (i.e. not a continual monthly expense. That being said, its a pain to navigate multiple free services and the only one that comes remotely close to this would be drop box since it's fairly easy to get a lot of free storage. What I don't like about their service is that now they are pushing the desktop utility on me to use the service and they deleted an inactive account. So long term storage for data you don't visit often makes the service useless for my personal needs. On a side note, I've started to make use of g-mail for sharing large content for the short term. It just seems better than clogging up drop-box with stuff I only needed to store for an hour.
-http://www.sit.fraunhofer.de/fileadmin/dokumente/studien_und_technical_reports/Cloud-Storage-Security_a4.pdf-
I use dropbox but I don't use the client installed on my PC. For me I just don't need an extra Program running on my machine. I just encrypt my data on my machine and then log into my dropbox account online and upload it there, that's really all I need for now.
IDriveSync offers 10 free GB and you can get up to 30 GB through referrals and several other things. They also offer a private encryption key if you want it.
I do use DropBox very occasionally, but I voted for not using cloud storage, as for the most part I have no use for cloud storage, and really have no idea which service is best.
