Replies

1) Boxcryptor is an excellent product, which works very well with the cloud services I have tried so far. At the moment I have it working on the Windows 8.1 implementation of SkyDrive.

2) Boxcryptor is German, not American or Chinese. I therefore trust it rather more than most cloud encryption tools. See the website – it belongs to Secomba GmbH.

3) @David40:
I don’t think there is much possibility of an NSA “back door” in this software, since it was produced by an EU company, which specifies that it has used AES256 and RSA2048 to USA FIPS standards (which are known not to have “back doors”).

4) @VicSetter:
There are versions of Boxcryptor for Android and iOS. The one for Android seems to work fine. Don’t know about Windows Phone, but then I don’t know anyone who has one anyway.

5) @mpoling:
Boxcryptor has arrangements for sharing with others. I don’t know the details, but you can find them on the website. The other people do not need to know your master password. I don’t know whether Boxcryptor works with Office365 – have a look at the website – but I think Microsoft is planning to provide encryption anyway.

“Anyone who can hack a SkyDrive account will be able to decrypt a Boxcryptor cypher” – with RSA-2048 and AES-256, not until around the year 2030, by which time you probably won’t care.

6)@mrjimphelps: See (9) below about “sloppiness”.
Although Boxcryptor is free to sync one provider, you have to pay if you want to sync more than one, or if you are a company – they provide business-grade services. So I don’t think you have to worry too much about the quality.

7) @Doccus, @timsinc, @erniejay856:
I think you are getting confused between the algorithm, which is the mathematical procedure for enciphering (such as RSA-2048 and AES-256), and the key, which is needed to do the encryption/decryption. Of course the algorithm is in the software on your PC, because you wouldn’t be able to encrypt otherwise. And the key has to be generated on your PC too, by hashing your password, likewise so the encryption/decryption can be done. All installations of Boxcryptor have the same algorithms; there are quadrillions of possible keys at least, so none has the same key.

Once an attacker has physical access to your PC, the game is pretty well up. The best you can do is make sure you have a really good password which would take a few years to brute-force (at least 10 characters, mixed symbols etc).

@timsinc: You would need to put your Boxcryptor password and key in your will.

You can back up the hashed-password key to a file on your PC and then store it elsewhere, so you would certainly be able to set up the account again on another PC.

8) If you really don’t trust Boxcryptor, you can set up an account with your own personally-generated key.(In that case even Boxcryptor has no way of recovering the key for you if you lose it).

Have a look at https://www.boxcryptor.com/en/technical-overview

9) @radtom, @Doccus, @mrjimphelps:
Writing “loose” instead of “lose” is a frequent error made by the less well-educated in English-speaking countries, so I think a German company can be excused, particularly as the rest of their text is very fluent, more so than some of these comments. I bet your German is not even a fraction as good.

10) A similar product is Viivo, this time from PKWARE Inc., so presumably the USA. Again, the basic version is free. I have it working well with Google Drive.

11) If you want separate “zero-knowledge” encrypted cloud storage, then SpiderOak looks OK (although in the USA), but better is Wuala (http://www.wuala.com), which is based in Switzerland and Germany, and therefore comes under EU data protection laws. I use Wuala too. It is also business-grade, with good provision for sharing.

12) If you want to be really sure, encrypt your material with AESCrypt or TrueCrypt before uploading to the cloud.

I don’t have any connection with Boxcryptor, Viivo, or Wuala.

J M Ward
Minehead
UK

CCleaner and ASC are the only system maintenance tools that I trust. I have never had any trouble of any sort with either, no system boot or other corruption, and they both do a good job on keeping the system tidy and removing the excess temporary files and other crap. CCleaner is also great for preventing programs starting that you just don’t want running at boot-up, and for getting rid of right-click context menu additions that you don’t need.

I use both these regularly, as they are to some extent complementary. I even pay for the Pro edition of ASC as I get a cheap deal and it’s useful to have the extra wrinkles. Only one thing to look out for with ASC; System Optimization can disable services that it thinks you won’t need, which in certain circumstances can mean the network services that support HomeGroup, for instance, so after running it you need to uncheck the “Services” box in the results before running “Repair”.

One more free one that has been recommended, and I think might be good, is PrivaZer. This does a good job of removing every superfluous file it can find, but it seems still to be in development – I had it hang on me a couple of times, but without doing any damage. But the support from the development team was good; when I reported the bug they sent me the link for a new version.

If you just want to use one, stick with CCleaner.

I have to agree with Woody. I backed up my Windows 8/7 system (with EaseUD ToDo Backup) and installed the 8.1 preview directly. Then I played with it for – oh, must have been about two hours. Boring. I reloaded my Windows 8/7 system.

Why Windows 8/7? Because I’ve installed Windows 8 to get all the vaunted advantages of slightly increased speed, stability, etc., but at minimal cost I’ve also installed StarDock’s Start8, ModernMix, and WindowBlinds (also Fences), so the OS looks and behaves just like Windows 7, right down to the Start button and glass effect. I’ve even got my gadgets back, thanks to AddGadgets and 8GadgetPack, as well as the proper games (Solitaire, FreeCell) courtesy of HowToGeek. This is all running quite happily on my ancient (2007?) HP nc6400 (4 GB) – Microsoft seems to have been reasonably honest about the minimum requirements.

So what’s all the fuss about?