Good morning guys, just joined the Forum!!
I’m looking into some free cloud storage options to store pics. Currently I use Proton Drive (1gb free is very less) and was looking at other alternatives if you guys have in mind. And no, I’m not willing to use cryptomator since it is paid on iOS and is only compatible with OneDrive and Google Drive.
Firstly, welcome @sushtimp. Personally I use Proton Drive alongside Filen. I also have a Skiff Mail account, and they too provide cloud storage. Both Filen and Skiff Drive have 10GB of storage in the free plan.
I use Filen’s free 10 GB plan. It autouploads pictures from certain folders from my Android device, perfect for my needs of simple automated backup, i don’t need to review them all the time. No idea if it’s available on iOS.
If you choose to try Filen, would you be so kind to share your experience, i’d like to know how it is on iOS.
Free and end-to-end encrypted? There’s MEGA and Filen. But both don’t have that much space for free.
Thank you for the warm welcome. Amongst Filen and Skiff what’d you recommend. A lot in this thread have replied for Filen being a good option. Thanks!
Just checked it out. Mega seems to provide 20gb upfront whereas for Filen it’s 10gb + extra for invitations and things like that maxing out to 50gb. Both seem more than enough for pics since I don’t take many but would like to have it stored safely on the cloud yk. Need to decide between the 2 in terms of privacy and security now since both suffice my needs.
Sorry for the inconvenience, I’m new to this 
Hi, personally I’d go with Filen as the first option. Skiff is based in US, while Filen is based in Germany so legislation is a bit more privacy friendly.
Thanks a lot for that swift response. How’d you fit in Mega into this picture, comparing it to Filen.
I heard Mega has some issues with encryption, but it is a great free option. If I were to use it, I would encrypt files using at least 7zip before uploading it.
I’m fine with encrypting my files as long as I don’t have to pay for it to view it on mobile. Cuz ofc pics is something I’ll be uploading from my mobile and also viewing on my mobile. Would be hard to first send it over to laptop, encrypt it and then upload it back again, that’s another reason.
I think that issue has been patched now and it was only exploitable if you logged in (enter your password) through the website 256 times or something like that. Which most people won’t do, they log in on the app, and maybe once on the website (with cookies saved) and that’s it.
One advantage Mega has is that is has an API for other apps to use. So for example, on Android you can use an app like Foldersync or Megasync to synchronize local folders with Mega (in one or both directions). I think rclone also can connect to Mega. And there’s also a CLI app called MEGAcmd which allows you to access Mega via WebDAV or FTP.
Filen and MEGA are your best bets. Both are FOSS and use E2EE when storing data.
Filen, you can get 50 GB free, but MEGA, only 20 GB.
I chose MEGA because it has more users, larger company, and more employees. Filen is great but only has three employees as of now. MEGA has been around since 2013 but Filen is under five years old.
I want to wait for Filen to mature as a company and gain stability before entrusting them with my life’s photos.
Filen’s Android app is unpolished and has some bugs, which makes sense given how new it is. That’s why I’m using MEGA right now, as I’m waiting for Filen to become polished and bug free.
Both are excellent options, right now I’d pick MEGA, but maybe I’d switch to Filen a little later in future.
Anything but encrypt first. Don’t blindly trust any clouds. I used to compress anything to .webp format to get more space.
Strongly agree, if you do this then even Google Drive is plenty enough. PGP is a good encryption method to use if you need cross platform compatibility.
For me, any encryption that provided by clouds is just an additional.
If somehow their servers got hacked, the encryption key that used to encrypt your files are useless (in case they can break the encryption key).
So it’s your responsibility to make sure any files that you have can be viewed only by yourself.
That’s exactly the point of end-to-end (or client-side) encryption. They don’t have the key then. This is not to be confused with encryption at rest (most cloud providers do that) and encryption in transit (every provider does that).
Small correction: they are “source available” but not “free”. The license does not allow forking them. Kind of understandable, because they don’t want a competitor to just copy their code and offer the same for less.
Don’t Use PGP For Cloud Storage!
Exceptions exist. This is a general guide for non-cryptographers.
One would disagree. Whilst PGP provides currently ample protection against conventional cryptographic attacks*, PGP’s key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) is weak against post quantum (PQ) attacks.
Furthermore, asymmetric cryptography would appear inappropriate for this type of cloud storage (whereby the user encrypts-then-uploads; and downloads-then-decrypts). In this scenario the user holds the private key and is only encrypting to one’s own public key, hence asymmetric cryptography is providing no security benefit, but rather a security weakness, as previously evidenced vis-a-vis KEM.
On the other-hand, symmetric cryptography, such as AES and ChaCha20, are not currently affected by PQ attacks**. Furthermore, the key deviation functions (KDF) are not vulnerable to any quantum attacks***. In synthesis, a purely symmetric scheme, e.g. AES-256-GCM-Argon2, would provide substantially greater protection against both conventional and PQ attacks, compared to asymmetric cryptography, especially RSA.
*assuming a sufficiently secure key (e.g. Curve25519).
**according to the current literature.
***assuming the KDF does not use any asymmetric schemes, which most do not.
Important context:
PGP/GPG can be configured to use either RSA or ECC along with AES within a hybrid encryption scheme.
Hybrid encryption schemes use both symmetric and asymmetric cryptography; however, the asymmetric cryptography is vulnerable due to the KEM, not the encryption cipher.
TLDR:
Use symmetric cryptographic schemes, in this instance, as it providers greater protection against both conventional and post-quantum attacks.
A example of symmetric cryptography would be AES-256-GCM-Argon2, where “AES” is the cipher, “256” is the key length, “GCM” is the cipher mode (please choose the cipher-mode carefully), and “Argon2” is the KDF (the algorithm which turns your password into a key).
Alternatively, use XChaCha20Polly1305 with Argon2.
If Argon2 is unavailable use: scrypt, bcrypt or PBKDF2.
Oh ok I see. I have actually not used PGP at all so I wasn’t aware of these vulnerabilities. Thank you.