Greetings to all my readers!
It’s quite an often issue – how to pass some important information quickly and securely with no placing it in some cloud, whether it is a server password or some hot party video. With the sensitivity of such an information, unauthorized access may cause significant financial and moral damage. Needless to say, data like that must be transferred by the most secure channels and, of course, must not be stored anywhere. This becomes even more actual with large-scale governmental surveillance programs – just thinking of Prism or NSA’s Xkeyscore can put one to horror.
However, some may still believe that email servers or popular messengers are well protected against any leaks of information. Certainly – every project of that kind keeps reminding it’s users of their data protection efficiency. Let’s have a closer look at this matter.
Logically, in any case the data sent elsewhere will be put to storage of some kind in capacity of a company, messenger’s owner or email service. The information is yours, but it will be placed on some other company’s server – even saying it seems odd. Here the reasonable question appears: can the safety of this information be guaranteed, especially when there is no clear understanding of who really can access that info storages?
“Cyber trace” in digital world can stay for a very long time. And it really can trace sensitive information on e-mail servers or public cloud storages with no effort. While anti-hacker protection is manageable to a certain degree, total security from mass tracing programs from governments doesn’t seem an easy task.
So, how to pass such an information with 100% confidentiality guaranteed?
Starting with it means refusing from using of insecure channels – well-known messengers, social networks, public cloud services and email services. Then, I recommend to have at least the first approach to data transfer technologies with complete end-2-end encryption which protect the data to be transferred with innovative encrypting algorithms and, more importantly, DO NOT SAVE the information anywhere else other than your devices.
Personally, I use one range services which allow the sender and recipient exchange their data directly with no centralized administrative storages involved. In particular, this task can easily be delivered by Resilio Sync (https://resilio.com) and Pvtbox Sync (https://pvtbox.net). This services provide an opportunity to save the transferred data on trusted devices (of any kind) only – PCs, servers, phones, etc. Besides, of that devices a user can create his or hers own private cloud storage with personal account and password.
Those two services being compared, the Resilio’s design is good – shades of gray, seems good to me. Also, Resilio is quite old, they work since 2013. In its turn, Pvtbox has some functions that I didn’t find in Resilio: for example, when I want to download a file via web browser, in Resilio it will take an app to be installed while for Pvtbox only the browser itself will be enough.
As for sharing a file via a phone, it’s pure and simple – fast app installation on a phone, then adding a file in secure app folder (which is not supposed to go anywhere to public cloud), creating a link, and sharing the copied link with the chosen contact by sending it in any preferred way. Advanced settings for the link created are also possible – for example, for it to be deleted automatically after file is downloaded or by a timer preset.
It means, as soon as the data is transferred, the “digital trace” mentioned above simply vanishes forever with no trace of its own. In such a case finding the way of downloading (and especially the source) is simply not possible even with a great desire for that.
The file is not being stored anywhere other than on your own device. And if the download link has been deleted, the access to the info from outside does not exist any more. So I absolutely can recommend this way for everyone who cares about personal informational security!
P.S. The service has an option of ready to use secure file storage and transfer platform called Pvtbox – E-Vault. https://pvtbox-evault.com
