Certain agencies appear to have the capability to trawl files at will – Google states that it scans files, Dropbox allow files that are the same as ones in someone else’s account to be uploaded instantly (i.e. they store a single copy) and Microsoft have banned users for uploading images that they deemed broke their terms of service, which de facto means they’re taking a look at them. However, if you upload data to the services already encrypted, then the services cannot view the data that you’ve uploaded and it’s much more secure against prying eyes. Doing so means you can use whatever service you want to use without fearing for the safety of your data (in terms of data security). If you hold the encryption keys, theoretically, no one can view the data other than you.

So how can you upload the data to these services encrypted? And how can you keep your computer backed up to the cloud using these free services? This article explains a range of options.There are a few programs that will allow you to upload to different data services after the data has been encrypted locally. These apps may not require that the services own backup/sync program is installed, and therefore you can often backup to multiple services with just one backup app. For example, Arq does not require the OneDrive program to be installed for it to backup to OneDrive. It also backs up to Dropbox and Google Drive without requiring them to be installed, and therefore you can use one program to backup to multiple services without having each services own programs installed.Note that, in most instances, if you lose the encryption key you will also lose access to your files – so make sure you keep a (secure) backup of your passwords.Īrq has been around for the Mac since 2009. It was created initially to backup encrypt data and backup offsite using Amazon S3. Since then, it’s been updated to send data to Amazon Glacier, Google Drive, Google Nearline, SFTP servers, OneDrive and Dropbox.

It’s also recently released a Windows version, but unfortunately there is no Linux support.Īrq encrypts and compresses all data locally before it uploads it to the service you choose.

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