lnh

Count me among those who where were singing the praises of BTSync prior to version 2. I do believe in paying for good software especially if connected with a high privacy business model. However, I'm not a fan of subscription pricing and as an example have left new subscription only Adobe products. I don't have a lot of experience gauging value for monthly price except for one system which I do use... LastPass @ $12/year. Their basic service is free and only charge if you want mobile access and a couple of advanced features (e.g. 2 factor via YubiKeys). I use LastPass probably 30+ times a day auto-filling logon credentials across multiple systems, and although not perfect it has made me use long random passwords which are all different and overall it works really well. I'm much less thrilled with their mobile phone experience and actually export my LastPass data to Keepass and much prefer using Keepass2Android on mobile. I signed up for LastPass because I felt guilty getting so much daily value that a $12/year “donation” was the honorable action. I value BTSync 1.4.x in a similar way, but don’t feel I get nearly as much daily value from its use as LastPass. In a comparative way, I’d say a paid “home user” version of BTSync would be worth about ¼ to ½ of what I’m paying for LastPass or in the $3 - $6/year range. If pushed, I might go as high as $8/year. For me, I will continue to use v1.4.x while I’m evaluating other choices. FWIW, the free version 10 folder limit (and the rollback of promises) doesn’t bother me as much as the high yearly price for my needs as a casual user. I understand the reason for subscription for something like LastPass which has to maintain very secure servers with high availability and continue to write new software for pretty much every client in existence. I believe Adobe did it because their core software had matured to such a high level that customers weren’t seeing enough new value to justify continuous paid upgrades. Many of the new features Adobe has added are better served by dedicated specialty programs anyways. I see BT’s situation much closer to LastPass, however the pricing is just way too high.

EDS is an Android encryption app which can be used to create and use encrypted file containers. The paid version has more features than the free, and if you're rooted you can even do more. EDS is compatible with TrueCrypt and VeraCrypt containers as well as several other formats. You do have to pay attention to the encryption and hash methods supported by EDS. Containers created by desktop software (i.e. TrueCrypt or VeraCrypt) are compatible with EDS as long as those methods are common. Not the most pretty or user friendly program you'll run into, but it does the job. The way it works is you open the encrypted container using a password and it then brings up a built-in file explorer showing what is in the container. You work on those files however you like, and then when you close the container everything is automatically buttoned back up. Technically, you asked about encrypting a folder, and what I'm describing is a container file which would sit in a synced folder. BitLocker is not compatible with EDS and I'm not aware of any compatible Android solution. TrueCrypt and VeraCrypt are both available on PCs, Macs and Linux. The author(s) of TrueCrypt stopped development earlier this year, but the downloads are still available and the public audit of TrueCrypt has yet to find any show stoppers which makes it a completely unsatisfactory solution. VeraCrypt is essentially the exact same UI as TrueCrypt, but is still being actively developed. VeraCrypt and TrueCrypt containers are not compatible with each other, and I've found VeraCrypt containers noticeably slower to open on both Windows and Android vs TrueCrypt. I believe there is also an implementation of the Linux LUKS setup on both Android and Windows, but don't know much about it.

I'm new to Sync, and so far things are going OK between a desktop PC, Synology box and an Android phone. One question... Is there any way to selectively drop a peer while keep the others. The only way I've found is to disconnect everyone and start over. If a method doesn't exist, I'll add it to the feature request sub-forum.