So I need some kind of cloud storage for work, however I want to move away from Google Drive (obviously). While I started my deGoogling journey by switching to Proton Unlimited, I am now looking to decentralize services from Proton, especially Proton Drive.
I have already tried the “put it on a hard drive and carry it around” route and unfortunately, it is just not working.
So the two Drive alternatives I have found are NextCloud and Filen. I would love to hear people’s opinions on each (good and bad), and I am also open to any other suggestions.
The two I use are Nextcloud and Mega. Nextcloud is my primary location and I have a script that runs daily to replicate the Nextcloud with Mega. I chose Mega because it has end to end encryption and Mega cannot see your data. They also cannot recover your account if you forget your password. They have had issues/controversy in the past but these days they are, in my eyes a solid choice. I also make use of their S3 bucket so that my Proxmox Backup Server can save offsite so technically Nextcloud is included in that as well!
How do you know that mega fulfills its promise?
Since they publish their client-side source code (https://mega.io/developers), anyone can verify that the encryption actually happens locally on your device before a single byte is uploaded.
Unlike Google or Microsoft where you just have to hope they aren’t scanning your files for ads or AI training (which they are!) Mega’s transparency means if there was a backdoor in the client code, the FOSS community would have flagged it years ago, it gives independent researchers a chance to check the behaviour. As an offsite backup is crucial, for me Mega is one of the better providers, not saying they are perfect but good enough for now.
i didn’t know that Mega had released a FOSS client.
hasn’t been audited, though.
why is MEga better than Cryptomator?
I don’t know if it has been audited or not to be honest but I know the source code is available on the Mega website.
I have not come across Cryptomator but that is now something I am definitely going to look into, I am always doing an audit on software I use and always looking to see what else is out there. Just because I use Mega at the moment doesn’t mean that is what I will be using in a year from now etc