When I looked for alternatives to the big three (un-encrypted*) cloud storage services – OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox – I settled on TresorIt because it reliably keeps my files safe using “zero knowledge encryption”. This means nobody, including them, can access my files without my key.
That’s good for privacy and data protection, not so good for sharing and finding stuff.
When push comes to shove, I need access to my stuff and often quickly – whilst being mobile. Imagine you are looking for a doc that contains important information you need for an appointment and all you have is your mobile. You just need to find that doc and promptly so to get to a vital bit of information.
“Sorry, Dave. I can’t let you do that.”
With TresorIt at least, you cannot easily find stuff on your mobile and the search is limited to the names of the tresors. That’s not something I had even considered because it’s something I do so often.
It totally escaped me!
So much to the importance of thoroughly assessing one’s needs when selecting service providers or software.
I can try the other contenders again, with a now revised set of requirements (must-haves), and focus on mobile. As a quick reminder, these are the providers I tested:
and TresorIt.com
#MobileFail
Sync dot com
The first, sync.com, has a rubbish mobile app, at least when I tried it for iOS. It does not have a search function either.
The Apple app store reviews for Sync.com app
pCloud
pCloud has a different approach and splits itself into two: one with non-encrypted files and one called ‘Crypto’, where files are encrypted. This is annoying and the files stored in the ‘Crypto’ area are not searchable either. I emailed their support to get an authoritative answer and sadly it’s not something they support.
TresorIt
TresorIt’s support advised me that this functionality may become available at some point in the future… . Hope dies last I guess.
“What do we do now, Batman?”
Good question. We could go back to Google and use add-on services like Virtru or GnuPG encrypt stuff. Or we could just wait it out and live with it.
Or, we could amend our strategy. Let’s make that a topic of another post.
Perhaps a good time to point out you can conveniently subscribe to my articles on both blog.axelsegebrecht.com and Medium.
*| They may store files encrypted but they don’t offer a way for the customer to be the only one holding the key. They could access your files and so can anybody else who gains access to their servers maliciously or legally. Yes, you could use a third-party encryption layer, which was not desirable in my case.