We have repeatedly stressed the usefulness of programs such as Dropbox that allow you to keep a synchronized copy of folders and files so that they are available on the internet and, at the same time, also on other computers. One of the problems that can arise when it comes to "cloud" applications is the security of data copied online to the private server of a company like Dropbox.
In fact, many are wary of putting online, albeit in a private and protected mode, important files that contain sensitive or in any case very confidential data.
In addition, with Dropbox surely you also use the folder synchronization feature so that they are available on multiple computers, that of work, that of home or others.
The need could therefore arise to protect such data so that, not only are they hidden and not visible online without authorization, even if your account was hacked and compromised but also that they are not visible to other people who can use one of the synchronized computers .
As seen in another article, you can protect password-encrypted files and folders on your computer on your computer, including the best of all, Veracrypt, practically invulnerable to any attack or attempted access.
A solution to protect yourself from prying eyes therefore could be the use of these programs which must be installed locally on each computer used.
The protection service called BoxCryptor is used, however, to encrypt files saved on the Internet in Dropbox, Google Drive, Onedrive, Box .
BoxCryptor is a program that must be installed on your Windows, Mac and Linux computer and is also available as an application for iOS and Android and Chrome extension
After installation, if Dropbox is installed on the system, it will be automatically detected and a sub-folder with the name BoxCryptor will be created inside the shared folder.
The program also creates a virtual disk in the system of which you will need to specify a letter (in Windows it becomes visible in the computer resources).
In the next step you will have to provide a password which will be used to encrypt and decrypt the data.
Finally, by clicking on ok, the installation is completed.
Protecting files with Boxcryptor is very simple because you just have to move the files or folders you want to encrypt and hide, inside the BoxCryptor disk that is located in the computer resources (not on the folder).
As you will see if you use Windows, BoxCryptor also appears as a computer disk and it is there that the protection takes place.
Once all the files have been copied to the BoxCrypt disk, you can click on the program icon in the system tray (bottom right near the clock) to close the program and make the virtual drive disappear by hiding the encrypted files from the computer .
To review the protected files, you need to reopen the program and enter the set password.
If you look inside the sub-folder created by BoxCryptor inside Dropbox or Google Drive or Onedrive, you will see some randomly named files which are the newly encrypted files.
Even by opening Dropbox from the website, these files will be protected with random names that are impossible to open or recognize.
The files normally appear only by opening the Boxcryptor program on the computer, in the virtual drive, after having obviously written the specified password.
The files are therefore invisible and encrypted in Dropbox but visible on your computer with Boxcryptor installed.
To use this protection system effectively, you must never use the " remember password " option which effectively eliminates encryption.
Furthermore, you don't have to delete the XML file that is created inside Boxcryptor as it is used by the program to encrypt and deript the files.
In the preferences you can change the location of the protected folder which, by default, is Boxcryptor inside Dropbox.
There is a free and paid version of Boxcryptor.
The main difference is that, with the free account, you can protect a maximum of 2GB space which may be enough to hide not the entire synchronized archive but only the most important files.
These are probably the best ways to protect files that are saved online on the Dropbox service so that no one can ever see, open or edit them.
In another more general article, the best ways to encrypt your online files in cloud storage are listed instead.
