Dear boxcryptor team,
as a first step towards safer data sync I am currently investigating ways to secure cloud sync'ed data - boxcryptor was one of the things that came to my mind quickly. However, I would have a couple of questions before I start, mostly concerning sharing, but also regarding some other topics. Maybe you can help me with that (beware, wall of text ahead :)).
First, some context that hopefully will help to understand where my questions come from: for some time now I use Dropbox for both synchronization of my (academic) publications and for collaborative writing with others - in doing so I both share folders with others and receive invitations for shared folders. Securing this process as much as possible without breaking workflows is my main concern. I also synchronize and share some less sensitive data (holiday photos, etc.), but securing this is of lower importance for now.
So to the questions:
1) From what I found on your website, it is possible to encrypt subfolders of a boxcryptor folder/volume from the context menu. Am I correct assuming that this means that I could have unencrypted folders (shared by collaborators or shared with collaborators without boxcryptor) within my boxcryptor folder?
Example:
"publications" would be my boxcryptor folder,
"publications/my_paper_1" would be a private encrypted folder,
"publications/shared_with_colleagues" would be an unencrypted folders shared by me,
"publications/securely_shared" would be a shared encrypted folder (shared by me via boxcraptor), and
"publications/shared_by_colleague" would be an unencrypted folder shared with me.
Is that possible?
2) Another question regarding sharing: from the documentation it seems that sharing with boxcryptor is a two step process: I) share folder via Dropbox (or any other cloud provider), II) share folder via boxcryptor. Has this process already been simplified via Dropbox API calls, or are there plans to do that?
3) It seems to use the sharing feature I have to upload my private key to your servers? Could you explain why this is necessary?
3a) Is there any way to upload the (encrypted) volume keys to your servers, but manage key distribution across devices myself?
3b) If there is there is none, do you support a hybrid authentication scheme with a key file and a password similar to KeePass?
4) Assuming that I purchase a license that allows file name encryption, but my collaborators do not own such a license, will this be a problem when sharing folders?
5) Can I also use boxcryptor with USB and e-SATA disks?
6) Just to make sure: I use Microsoft Synctoy to synchronize local (hard drive) folders with Dropbox and USB drives; are there any known problems with that?
Best regards and thanks in advance,
Sebastian
P.S.: Replies in German are also perfectly ok - I just posted in English in case the topics above are relevant to other users outside Germany.