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On 31/08/14 16:22, Neil Winchurst wrote: > Back in my 32 bit days I tried out a program called Tonido. Then I > progressed to 64 bit but Tonido didn't. Just recently I found that > finally Tonido had caught up with the 21st century and was now > available in a 64 bit version. So I have looking at it again. > > Also, at one time, I used Dropbox for a while, then lost interest. Now, > having picked up with Tonido again I have looked at Dropbox again and > also another similar program called Spideroak. (Where do they get these > names from?) > > These three programs sort of provide a similar function for users, but > not in the same way of course. So I am wondering if any one on the list > has any experience with any/all of them. Any comments or advice would > be helpful, > > thanks > > Neil > Good god man, I sometimes worry about you*: being all old school and generally sceptical of new technology is all well and good, but I suspect if I came around to your house I'd find a horse and carriage parked outside and a telegraph machine as your main communication device... Literally every person on the list except you is using one or several of these new fangled gadgets every day. For example, I have Dropbox on my phone, tablet, all my computers, my VMs and probably on my toaster. It's a file storage/synchronisation tool that lives on something called "the cloud" which you won't have heard of. I have also used owncloud, spideroak, google drive, onedrive (originally sky drive) and just about every other alternative out there. They all do exactly what they say on the tin: provide a convenient cloud-based storage facility of a few gigs for free or a lot more for actual money. I personally have never paid for any of them, but we have a corporate version of dropbox at work with about a Tb of stuff in. It's important to know that all of these cloud based services, paid or free versions, come complete with GCHQ/NSA backdoors cooked in so the spooks can trawl warrant free through all your stuff. Other people may lie to you and say this isn't the case but trust me, your reliable paranoiac here is correct about this. There isn't really a lot of advice to be given here: just download and try them out, make your own mind up. Except for the amount of free storage provided and the ease of setting them up on Linux, there isn't any difference between them. If you really care about data security, you'd frankly be mad to use any of them: you can of course client-side PGP encrypt anything before you send it upstream (I do this) or even follow complex tutorials to mount dropbox via ecryptfs but it's all a waste of time as the bad guys can root your Linux box, phone, SOHO router and everything else you own at any point they feel like anyway. If backups are your hidden premise here, the best (and really only) solution is to find a friend or family member you actually trust, and both buy a 4Tb+ drive and stick it in a USB enclosure. Backup everything initially, and swap drives. If you're feeling fancy, buy some Raspberry Pis (this is what I did with the bunch I bought the other day) and install them at each end: hook up the USB backup drives and use SSH/rsync to automate continuous incremental backups in the dead of night when the internet is quiet. This method will even survive apocalyptic data destruction at the level of house fires/police raids. Encryption is optional but recommended, no matter how much you trust the person at the other end. Cheers * all tongue in cheek of course: I don't worry about you at all, you are remarkably sane in a confusing and hostile modern world :] -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq