F-Secure Launches A Dropbox For the Dark Web And A VPN

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tamlinmagee/2013/11/14/f-secure-launches-a-dropbox-for-the-dark-web-and-a-vpn-that-could-erase-content-borders-everywhere/

by sampo • 13 years ago

56 22 13 years ago

forbes.com

eps• 13 years ago

Is this a re-launch of Younited?

Just looked at its website and I can swear I saw it before, not long ago.

woof2• 13 years ago

They have to launch it before they can do a re-launch:)

This was news late september btw.

e1ven• 13 years ago

It's difficult to know what they're offering with so few details.

The article writes that "F Secure will not stop a proper investigation from the authorities. But it has done its level best to make sure your content cannot be combed and picked up by intelligence agencies or advertisers, without your knowledge or through illegal means, and promises that everything from the thumbnail to the content itself and the metadata is all encrypted."

I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile these two statements. Perhaps everything is encrypted, but they have access to your key (Similar to Lavabit) ?

Alternatively, they might only be referring to delivering metadata to 'authorities'.

I'm not sure where their niche is - People who sorta-kinda want things private, but not enough to use a serverless solution such as http://www.filetransporter.com/ ?

idamateur• 13 years ago

Im thinking it might appeal to the average (non-technical) European who is upset about the Snowden revelations

polarix2• 13 years ago

Yes, it would appeal to anyone who doesn't have the capability to evaluate their misleading advertising.

im3w1l• 13 years ago

If you don't encrypt they will read everything all the time. If you encrypt with this service, maybe they will need to file some paperwork before they start looking.

sillysaurus2• 13 years ago

Younited collates your existing cloud accounts, making pictures, video, or whatever else you want to store and share available in one spot, including sharing options with popular services like Facebook FB +0.57%and Skydrive.

This is the opposite of "encrypted and impossible for authorities to access unless they get your key, which we don't have." Which is to say, the opposite of private. How does this service offer privacy?

state• 13 years ago

It seems to me that the best way to launch a product for the "dark web" would be to just release the code.

polarix2• 13 years ago

Yes. Systems making such claims that are not self-hosted are worse than worthless.

Numberwang• 13 years ago

Younited and Jottacloud? Come on my Scandinavian neighbors, those names are horrible.

kamjam• 13 years ago

So this is the issue with the term "dark" and the internet, it just makes it sound seedy and people are up to no good, using tools for illegal for very underground purposes. No where in the article itself does it mention "dark web" apart from the title.

The Dark Mail Alliance watch out.

jlgaddis• 13 years ago

No where in the article itself does it mention "dark web" apart from the title.

Yep. I was looking for the reference to Tor and hoping that they were offering "dropbox" via a hidden service.

nl2• 13 years ago

"Dropbox" has become generic term now?

chongli• 13 years ago

It's been a generic term for far longer than the company's been around.

nl2• 13 years ago

Not in the "software that syncs files" sense of the word (which is of course a pretty important distinction under trademark law).

D9u• 13 years ago

Unfortunately Younited doesn't support unix-like systems which aren't Mac... We'll see how it goes, but I'm not going to install Windows or OS X.

mynameishere• 13 years ago

I just skimmed that at first, and really had no idea what had been said. Then I went back and really read the first couple of paragraphs.

They really, really look like they were written by an automated process. I can't imagine a humanoid writing this:

Quite simply, everything is encrypted, with the purpose of transferring the most basic data ownership and levels of privacy back to the control of the user, even when sharing through Facebook.

I mean, it sounds...sort-of kind-of human. But how do "quite simply" and "everything is encrypted" go together? There's nothing simple about encryption. A 14 year old writing a book report could put weird constructions like that together, but this whole thing had similar weirdness throughout, but with vocabulary I wouldn't expect from a bored teenager.

You know they are already writing sports articles with computers. Why not business articles?

nodata• 13 years ago

It sounds translated. Badly.

woof2• 13 years ago

Sounds like marketingspeak to me.

A one liner unique value proposition with cool new words like encryption and Facebook if you will...

frank_boyd• 13 years ago

I welcome all efforts to fight the abuse taken as granted by the government(s).

On the other hand:

a virtual private network (VPN) smartphone app

"smartphone app": for iOS and/or Android, I suppose. Can we trust anything that does not run on an open-source OS? Absolutely not.

LionRoar• 13 years ago

If someone starts about Dark Web, VPN and privacy and then states: "so if a request for your data is legitimate, F Secure will not stop a proper investigation from the authorities" it renders it immediately completely useless in my opinion.

As the last year proofs authorities are the ones that do the snooping. So if it doesn't protect us from them, what's the point of such a service. Also linking to Facebook and Skydrive that have government-backdoors seems not so private to me.

Does F-Secure really understand in which world we live in today? Oh well, neither do I, back to my coffee.

summerdown2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure I understand what the offering is.

How does:

"everything is encrypted"

work together with:

"The Younited service automatically scans all files for malware that you add to the cloud?"

... presumably that makes it server-side encryption in which they're reserving the right to perform some manipulation of files first (virus scanning, deduplication?)?

... but if so, how can they include the statement:

"we like what dropbox and skydrive do, but where is the privacy?"

Isn't this exactly what dropbox does? I presume they will use ssl to transfer the data, perhaps even encrypt it in storage after they've scanned the plaintext, but surely this is as as vulnerable to their own staff and their government as any other service?

F-Secure Launches A Dropbox For the Dark Web And A VPN

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