Web-Based Private File Storage?

steve802 writes "Recently, someone died in our company, and word is getting around that the admins who were given access to his Outlook account have found personal things that are embarrassing at best (the rumor mill differs on what was found). No matter, it raises a question. I have personal stuff in Outlook folders that I would not want someone in IT to see if I suddenly dropped dead: emails to the wife, photos of the kids, that kind of thing. I also keep a journal at home that I save to a server; personal reflections that I never want anyone else to see, especially if I die. So I was thinking that some sort of web-based storage for files, individual emails, and perhaps even Outlook folders would be perfect. All my most private personal stuff in one place. I found CryptoHeaven, which seems to offer some of what I'm looking for — but it is pricey. I'm willing to pay, but something less than $400/year would be nice. Best would be a service with a dead-man's switch, so that if I don't access it in, say, three months, it auto-purges. Any thoughts?"

Freenet

[Wonko the Sane]

Slow, but very secure.

Re:Freenet

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Any web service, just create a TrueCrypt [truecrypt.org] container. As long as you sync the container between your computers regularly it shouldn't be an issue. I've been doing it this way for about 3 years now (I keep all of my important data there for when I'm on the road). Works perfectly fine with Windows and Linux.

Re:Work account?

[grasshoppa]

No shit. OP: Bad news, if it's on company equipment, IT has already looked at it. Your fetish for donkeys is now well known.

As far as the personal stuff at home; who cares? Family means never having to explain the albino midget you keep in the closet.

Re:Separate them

[jtownatpunk.net]

No shit. I swear some people can be amazingly stupid. I once had a guy call me when he had trouble sending an email. "Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: I wuv my snookums." "Body: I can't wait to see you again..." (That's where I tuned out and flipped on the blinders.) Now if this had been Mrs. VP, that's no big deal, tho still the kind of thing that shouldn't go in the corporate email archive. But the address was not Mrs. VP. It was Mr. VP's former assistant. And the guy KNEW it was going in the archive because one of his requirements for the email archiving system was that it be impossible for messages to be removed from the archive. And instead of just deleting the message, he called for help, GUARANTEEING that it would be noticed.

Looking back, maybe he wanted to be caught. But don't drag the IT department into your divorce, dude! Not cool.

Re:Discretion?

[JumpDrive]

In our work area, what has happened is information has gone from the CEO to a VP and then to everyone else. Then IT gets blamed for the rumor.
First time it happened, I was thinking "Do you think I'm a dumbshit", second time it happened I realized IT was going to be blamed for their knitting circle talk.
After that I just started pretending I don't see it.
But if it ever something seriously illegal, I'll tell law enforcement.
Other than that I don't want to add to the knitting circle talk.

Re:GOOGLE MAIL

[rwa2]

Yeah, really! I don't know why anyone is paranoid about Google at all when your ISP and cellphone providers have all your data activity records on hand.

I pay a bit extra for the "business" tier of service, so I can actually run my own web and email server on my home machine. I've pretty much been hosting everything on my own server since my college days. Never used / needed a USB stick for working on school projects, just pulled it in over the internet using PuTTy/PSFTP or more likely VNC+ssh. I even presented some final projects over VNC running a little opengl thing over VNC.

I don't have a "smartphone" (call me old skool), but if I did all I'd need is a good ssh client (such as midpssh) and a good VNC client, and I'm in business. Works fine on my Palm TX PDA tethered to my dumbphone.

For offsite backups, I occasionally rsync my home dir over to a friend's server, which I've donated hardware for (including hard disks, among other things). The sensitive stuff like financial records and nekkid pics of the wife are encrypted with PGP. The rest of the porn we all share.

Frankly I'm more worried about data being lost forever than data getting "out". If I get hit by a truck, my dying words scrawled in a pool of blood will be the master password for my keyring vault so my wife can pay the bills online. I'll pass away very anxious about whether she can decipher the special characters properly.

Re:Freenet

[dan828]

It could be that you want to ensure that people you care about won't be emotionally harmed by things you did and kept secret. In the military, if one is killed, they sanitize personal effects, destroy "little black books" and the like, just so that the wife or whomever back home doesn't find out about your time with the Thai hooker in Bangkok or the mistress you had while TDY in England. Frankly, it's a policy that keeps the "loved ones" from being harmed by things that it really doesn't do anyone any good to know about. Really, who is it going to help to know what a shit you were in private after you're gone?