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Google's Gdrive Raises Instant Privacy Concerns
An anonymous reader writes "The rumor mill is already raging over the potential functionality and capacity for Google's online storage service we talked about earlier this week (the company says 'it makes sense' to put all its Web apps under the same umbrella). But Internet rights advocates are now crying foul over liability issues, a probable lack of encryption and a cash-cow model that could scan all your personal data for advertising keywords. From the article: "'Google would be wise to offer users an option to encrypt your information,' says Nimrod Kozlovski, a professor of Internet law at Tel Aviv University. 'It really needs to have really detailed explanations of what the legal expectations are for storing your info.'""
First off, if you're that concerned about your data being secure, you probably should just store it on a personal webserver and encrypt it yourself.
That being said, I really don't see this as a major concern for Google in relation to the success of Gdrive. A large percentage of people today really don't care about whether or not their personal data is scanned an analyzed, as proven by the information people list on social networking sites like facebook, myspace, livejournal, etc.
So the real question here is whether or not Google (and the small percentage of users that would use encryption) would benefit enough from this feature to offset the time needed to develop it and the hassles that will come along with it. I think that alot of the users wont realize that if Google encrypts their data with the password that the users provide, then there will no longer be that friendly "Forgot your password? Let us reset it for you." button. People will then be constantly complaining that they can no longer access their data if they forgot their password and had it reset (Because the data is encrypted based on their old password obviously). The only way that Google would be able to recover that data for the user is a.) by brute forcing it, or b.) by using precomputed hashes in a rainbow table format (though something tells me that Google is smart enough to use salts and this wouldn't be an option). Realistically, even Google doesn't have the resources to go around brute forcing people's passwords. This means the only real way that Google could encrypt the data would be to store their passwords as plaintext in case the user forgot it, which is really just providing security as the cost of losing alot more security. All in all I don't see the process being beneficial for Google or the users.
Because that's not useful. If they encrypt your data for you, guess what? They have the key! If you want your data safe from them, YOU need to encrypt it. That's just how it works. If you send your data in the clear to someone else and then they encrypt it for you, that means they can get at your data. Same deal is you send them data and the encryption key as well (see AACS). The only way to give it to them, but not let them at it is for you to encrypt it yourself, and to not give them the key. Then and only then can you be assured that while they have a copy, they can't read it.
Seriously people, get Truecrypt, it isn't hard.