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Comment by simgidacav | Hacker News Reader

Not to be cynic, but what prevents those guys from putting a backdoor as well? Yeah, sure, Swiss guys are good. Are they?

In the end, IMHO, the only software which can be trusted is the FOSS. From this perspective Dropbox is good: the client is open source. Of course nothing is encrypted in there.

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Dropbox's client is not open source by any stretch of the imagination.

https://www.dropbox.com/help/247/en

On the first I was like "ops, said bullshit"... but actually it seems like it's GPL.

That is only nautilus-dropbox (file manager integration) and the installer. Dropbox itself is distributed as a binary blob.

From this perspective, tarsnap is even better - http://www.tarsnap.com/bugbounty.html

Indeed. But at least there is no proof so far that they are doing it. However, France also monitors internet/com equipment, so it is indeed possible they will be required to put in a backdoor.

Still, FOSS solutions are indeed better from a security perspective.

Indeed it depends on their willingness to make a backdoor, US companies don't have that luxury anymore ...

A back-door in where, exactly?

The closed source binary blob?

Exactly, this is the point. If privacy is important for you, closed source software is not trustworthy, unless it's placed downline of encryption.

... or even in the Java runtime?

Oracle is supplying enough zero day exploits to have no need for backdoor.

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