Dropbox is a fantastic way of saving and also sharing your files, not only for easy access between your own computers but also to share with others. If you’re going to save file of a more private nature in Dropbox, then you should consider encrypting them first.
Now you may say that you don’t have any secret files, so encrypting isn’t for you. But there you’re wrong! If you really think about it, how would you feel like if someone where able to see all the transaction on your bank account? Most of us just have the salary in on the account and then we pay bills until all the money is gone, but do you really someone to know which phone company you use, which gas company you use etc?
Another example could be your vacation pictures. Do you really want someone to watch your sisters kids when they’re on the beach?
So now when we’ve concluded that you need to have your files encrypted, how do you do it?
Most people don’t know how easy it is to encrypt all your files. I use Truecrypt on most of my files and especially on everything that belongs to Xavier Media, just because I don’t want anyone to see my files unless I give them explicit permission. Truecrypt is free and is available for Windows, Linux and Mac (download at www.truecrypt.org).
Once you have it installed you just press the “Create Volume” button to create your first encrypted volume. In Truecrypt (at least in the Windows version) you can encrypt entire disk drives or you can choose to encrypt a container that will then be mounted like a hard drive, which means that everything will act like a hard drive to the user (i.e. you).
In this example we’re just going to create a standard volume, but when you get more advanced you could want to create hidden volumes too to make it even harder (I would almost say impossible) for anyone to guess that you have encrypted files on your computer.
Now it’s time to select the file where you want to save the encrypted container. This will not encrypt a file, so don’t select any file you want to save. I would suggest you create a file called vacation_movie_2002.avi or something to make curious eyes not so curious about that file 😉 . Make sure you save this file in the folder that’s synced with Dropbox. That way you will always have your encrpted container synced with your Dropbox account and you can access your encrypted files from any computer that got access to your Dropbox account 😉
Now it’s time to select the encryption options. I usually just go for the standard options, but when you get more advanced you could research pros and cons with the options if you like.
The size of the encrypted container would depend on two things: 1. the size of your Dropbox account and also 2. the size of the files you’re going to save.
Since this is going to be like a hard drive you could make it as big as your Dropbox account, but then you can’t save any un-encrypted files in your Dropbox account. So make it as big as you feel you need. If you need more space you can always upgrade your Dropbox account and make the encrypted container bigger 😉
Now it’s time for the password. Most people just use the same password everywhere and it’s also usually a common word like password or their own name. This is not to recommend and I would suggest you use our password generator to generate a strong and hard to guess password to make it so hard as possible to crack your encrypted container (what’s the point of encrypting your files if it’s easy to crack your password?).
To make the security even better you can select one or more key files which are files that will be used a s a password. For this you can select any files you like, like for example photos or PDF documents. The thing to remember here is to keep a backup of the files you use as key files, because if you loose the files or if the files are damaged you can’t access your encrypted volume any more. I would strongly recommend to use both a strong password and also key files since that would increase the security dramatically.
Select the file type to be used, and then just move your mouse pointer randomly over the Truecrypt window to create a random pool.
When the volume has been created, just select a letter for the drive to be mounted on and click on the “Mount” button to mount your encrypted volume. Now you can store your files in the encrypted volume like you would in any normal hard disk or flash memory stick and everything will be synced by Dropbox just in case your computer got stolen or just stopped working 😉 .
Always be safe, never sorry!
