Why I switched from DropBox to Wuala

Wired.com had an article I read earlier today talking about how Dropbox doesn't really provide the privacy they promise. After seeing what has happened with Sony, the idea that my private files might be unprotected going back and forth to my mobile device, and that "some" users at Dropbox can access my files even though they are supposed to be encrypted, was too much for me to feel comfortable with. Not that I have anything in particular to hide, but I do have some passwords and personal information in some of the docs I was using it to back up.

So after looking at the other offerings out there, I decided to go with Wuala. Since it's owned and operated by LaCie, I feel comfortable they understand how to provision storage. But I was also reassured by their privacy policy, and watching them setup a proper set of keys that make sure I have my own private keys on my machine. Like Dropbox they also had an Android client which is a big deal for me :-)

One additional item that caught my eye, however, is that they will let you trade space. IOW, after I have been up for a couple days and "prove" that my machine is accessible at least 4 hours a day, I can trade some of my disk space for more free space on their server. IOW, I can give up 10 (or up to 100) Gigs of my HD space that their service uses to provide "slivers" of file space (a file in their system is split into several slivers so no one file is completely on one machine), and then they let me have that much additional space free. I think 10 Gigs will be more than enough for me (documents and photos to put back on my desktop), and using something I already have to do that so I can avoid a monthly charge is quite nice. Plus if I just wanted to buy space, they sell 10 Gigs for only $29/year (rather than a monthly charge at the other places).

Consider me an almost happy camper. The one thing missing is that QuickOffice for Android does NOT support Wuala as a "Cloud" option. Maybe someday...