This seems to be the MO for this particular site. There is a blog post calling out someone's faults (privacy, security, etc), some basic misinformation and a plug for his service as being better.
I don't mind him wanted to do PR, but it does seem a bit distasteful. This was basically an ad couched in something that was supposed to look like content.
As one of the previous posters said, there are tradeoffs made when using a SaaS service and it is not possible to run a system like theirs while using strong client side, opaque encryption. Besides, comparing a backup system to a online file management system is apples to oranges.
There is a blog post calling out someone's faults (privacy, security, etc), some basic misinformation and a plug for his service as being better.
I make lots of posts about security and cryptography. I happen to think that Tarsnap does things right; if I didn't, I would have Tarsnap do things differently.
I usually decide to blog about something based on (a) whether I think it's interesting, and (b) whether I think people will learn from it. (There are exceptions like calling out jungledisk for not fixing weaknesses in their cryptography, but those are rare.) The question "will this give me a chance to advertise Tarsnap" doesn't come into it -- for one thing, the vast majority of my readers are already aware of Tarsnap.
I don't mind him wanted to do PR, but it does seem a bit distasteful. This was basically an ad couched in something that was supposed to look like content.
As one of the previous posters said, there are tradeoffs made when using a SaaS service and it is not possible to run a system like theirs while using strong client side, opaque encryption. Besides, comparing a backup system to a online file management system is apples to oranges.