The idea is simple, combine both the ability to store data in the cloud with cryptography. In an easy and manageable way. Which you can use on any system you might own, and by any, I mean Windows, Linux and OSX.
Two products are involved to accomplish this in a truly secure manner.
By default Dropbox will set itself up as a folder in your home directory. Be it “My Documents” on Windows, your home folder on Linux and OSX. From there on once you drop files into that folder it syncs with the Dropbox backbone. (Amazon S3).
It will still be available on your local drive as well. Even though Dropbox says:
All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password.
there’s still the possibility of the unknown. Even if the data stored in the cloud should be safe, there’s still the issue about local access.
Enters TrueCrypt. An open source and easy to use cryptography software package. We will create a volume, a file container that we will store in our Dropbox folder and mount as a usable drive.
Once it’s created you can mount it using the password you chose, and start using it to store data. Dropbox will allow up to 2GB of free storage.
I personally use this for everything I store in plain text.
// CrashMAG