http://www.taoeffect.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4

Also, I’ve updated the instructions above a bit to be more compatible with Dropbox. The previous instructions removed Dropbox’s ability to add badges to folders. If you used the old instructions, you can switch to the new version by doing this:

1) Open Dropbox and go into its preferences.
2) Move the Dropbox to your home folder.
3) When it’s done, move the Dropbox again, this time select the *unlocked* Vault folder (in your Home folder, it will have a little arrow icon on it) as the destination.

Keeping data encrypted in Dropbox

First, quit Dropbox on the computer.
Then move the folder in question into Dropbox and then encrypt it.
Start Dropbox.
Folder is synced in it’s encrypted state.
From then on the folder can be used as normal with Espionage and will stay encrypted in Dropbox (in the cloud).

However, it is not possible to work with the encrypted file on a second computer. I have tried and gave up looking for a solution, when it became clear that any solution would be so cumbersome as to be impractical).

In order to sync encrypted files between two computers that stay encrypted on the Dropbox servers, the only solution seems to be to use ordinary dmg images.
That, of course, leaves out folders like that for the address book.
A compromise would be the work around described in my previous post.

George

I use Dropbox and never had problems with dmg images stored in ~/Dropbox. So, using Espionage for that should not be a problem as long as one uses only one computer at a time and makes sure that the dmg’s are locked.

My ‘problem’ is the data files that cannot be moved from their ~/Library/Application support folder (e.g. Postbox, for which even a symlink does not seem to work).

It seems for those application the only solution is to point the Espionage backup into the Dropbox folder.
And when using another computer, to restore that backup.

Does anybody have any better ideas ?

Thanks !

George

Everything seems to be working well, but I have no idea if Vault is actually encrypted or not, given the warning I received. Any quick way to check this?

Yes, check in Espionage whether its encryption is set to “No encryption”. If it’s not, then it’s encrypted!

Another issue: when I logout of my computer, so that Vault autolocks, I can’t Dropbox to start again. I get the error messages that Vault’s disk image can’t be mounted.

Please contact support, we’ll help you out.

~/Dropbox/SecureStuff is an Espionage’d sparsebundle.

When it is unlocked, and ~/Dropbox/SecureStuff is a symlink to /Volumes/EspionageMounts/…, Dropbox does not follow the symlink; it syncs the link itself, not what it points to. This is correct behavior at the filesystem level.

When I lock the folder, Dropbox _appears_ to sync only the ‘band’ files that have changed; it doesn’t appear to resync the entire hidden sparsebundle folder. But, I haven’t been terribly scientific about determining this and this particular sparsebundle is pretty small so the sync might be happening too quickly to see. At the time, my only concern was that Dropbox did not access /Volumes/EspionageMounts/… and sync the unencrypted content of SecureStuff. I see no evidence in my DB account that it does.

Dropbox v0.7.110.

Prior to today I would disable SecureStuff in Espionage, when finished working with it, because I couldn’t be bothered to read the docs to figure out exactly what whitelisting Dropbox would do. And, this way I knew that SecureStuff was getting synced to Dropbox in its encrypted entirety.

Having recently read about what whitelisting does, and that it doesn’t expose the encrypted content to the whitelisted programs, I’ve re-enabled SecureStuff. Next time I modify something in it, I’ll see if something goes horribly wrong or not.

I don’t have SecureStuff unlocked on, nor do I attempt to access it on, more than one computer at a time. Dropbox.app is whitelisted for SecureStuff on only one computer, as well.