Tom Voros

Syncthing is a free, open source file syncing app. It's a great alternative for services like Google Drive/OneDrive/Dropbox. It's peer-to-peer with end-to-end encryption so your data is secure, and it's available on a bunch of platforms (Win/Mac/Linux/Android). https://syncthing.net/ #foss

On the Android side, I'm using BasicSync which is itself free and open-source. It's one of the simpler Android clients for Syncthing but it does everything I need and has been solid for the past few months I've been using it. BasicSync is available on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.chiller3.basicsync/ #foss

There's a learning curve for the initial setup but the documentation is solid and there's lots of helpful info on the internet. The main UI is accessible through a local web server, and you can get additional apps for better native integration (though it honestly doesn't feel essential).

@RyeNCode@mstdn.ca I'm currently with CrocWeb for hosting. They're located in Ontario. Their Cloud Web Hosting plans are very generous and actually surprisingly great so far (~6 months). But I've only used their web and DB services, no email, so I don't know if that's any good. I was with Astral Internet a few years ago. Located in Quebec. Great experience with them too but they're more expensive so it didn't make sense to renew. And I didn't try their email either, sorry!

@RyeNCode@mstdn.ca Oof, yeah, good luck getting any support from Google. That's basically my fear about self-hosted mail, or even using a smaller host. I'm currently on Google Workspace and I definitely want to get off that, but I may try to find something that's still relatively big/popular for peace-of-mind. As a first step, anyway. 🙂

@RyeNCode@mstdn.ca That's a lot of great suggestions, thanks! I do need to figure out an alternative to GitHub. Might look into Forgejo for that. 👀 Mail is a tough one for me. I think I might stick to hosted mail to ensure uptime, and so I don't have to worry about security and whether my server is set up properly for anti-spam (both for incoming mail and how other servers perceive mail coming from mine).

@spacebug@n4.mikronod.se I mean, don't take my word for it, but my understanding is that the actual file syncing protocol is end-to-end encrypted. I think what you're seeing about TLS is related to the device discovery service. They have a small network of public services that assist with establishing the P2P connection (probably does NAT traversal and the like). This just allows your devices to find each other over the internet. Once they establish a connection the regular traffic is encrypted.