Any opinions about Filen?
Any opinions about Filen?
filen.io
Filen – Next Generation End-To-End Encrypted Cloud Storage
While I'm waiting for the Linux desktop client for Proton Drive . . . does anyone have any experience with Filen?
23 comments
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I'm pretty happy with them. Pricing is fair and their mission seems trustworthy. They have a decent cli client that I use to automate my backups with.
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At that point why not just use something like rsync?
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Here are my Filen testing notes from a couple of months ago. It's a habit of mine so I don't forget why I discarded some options.
- It's impossible to upload anything through the Win app. You can only set up sync folders where you need to place files. Through the web app, however, you can upload both folders and files.
- The desktop app disappears as soon as you switch to another app, and you have to launch it again by clicking on the shortcut.
- You can't access data in the cloud via a virtual drive or anything similar.
- In short, it's unusable for my use case.
Edit: Be aware that according to Matt@lemdro.id, the above issues have been rectified in the meantime, so you should give it a go before deciding.
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I do not know when you last tested Filen, but all of those work for me. They had a major update several months ago with a rebuilt desktop app and added the virtual drive functionality.
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Then I was obviously checking it a bit before that. Thanks for the update!
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I also moved from Proton to Filen, been way happier with their products so far!
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I jumped on a lifetime deal they had a few years back. I mostly use it via the web UI and Android app, so I cannot comment on desktop or CLI client functionality.
The Android app is "okay", but not great. Background photo sync doesn't work consistently; I need to manually launch the app periodically to jog it. I know Android is kind of aggressive about background services, but other apps do this better so I think this is on Filen. Perhaps they should run a permanent notification to stay alive 24/7, like Syncthing does?
As with pretty much every other cloud storage app, it does not let me sync arbitrary folders/files, only photos and videos. sigh
It uses Android's file provider API, so you can open and save files in most apps directly from/to Filen. However, this only seems to work for one-time use, not for apps that need to regularly open/save the same file. For example, when using Keepass2Android, you can have it store your password database on a cloud storage service. This works pretty well with Google Drive, but with Filen it loses the connection frequently because the pseudopaths the API returns are not stable over time (which makes sense, I guess, and is one more reason I want arbitrary local file sync instead). Personally, I went back to storing my Keepass database locally and then periodically backing it up rather than keeping it on live cloud storage.
It's one of the cheapest E2EE cloud storage services I've seen (definitely the cheapest for me with the lifetime promo I got), and the core functionality of uploading and downloading files (and folders) works. That's good enough for me to give it the thumbs-up.
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Been usung it for three years now I think. Still has issues sure, but over that time I have seen it improve massively, so I expect it will keep getting better. Development is slow though, so I understand that the current state is more important that hypotetical future improvements. I would definitely recommend you to try it with the free tier, and if you like then start stacking lifetime packages. As I see it there is nothing better right now with that balance of cost, features and privacy.
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Using them. Quite decent if a little bare bone. I wish for their notes app to be leaner to use but beside that it does exactly <hat it tells. Also, I quite like that, unlike so many clouds, I don't have to move all my files and folders to a 'filen' folder, it can sync as many folders as one needs, even on external drives.
If you can, wait for their Black Friday deals, prices are fine but they're even better then. They also offer more options for lifetime plans if you're more interested than in monthly sub.
When creating you're account, try to get an affiliate link before creating the account, as you will get double the free storage to begin with (20, instead of 10GB) and if you later decide to sub to/purchase a plan you have to keep that extra storage as a bonus. In case you need one, here is my affiliate link so you or anyone else using it can get the extra 10GB—and, nope, I won't get anything out of it anymore, as I already did get all I was promised (up to 3x10GB more free storage), and yep, I did keep them l when I upgraded to one of their lifetime plan ;)
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Thanks! They claim to have zero knowledge and E2EE . . . does End 2 End Encryption mean that my data is encrypted "in transit" as well as "at rest?" Was never quite clear on that.
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that's how I understand it.
Data is encrypted during transfer and also on their cloud, using a key only you have access to.
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Just in case, I wrote a little more in details about my impression, what I like and don't like, on my blog (ignore the beginning of the post if you're only interested in Filen itself) ;)
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E2EE is only in-transit. They are the other end, so it can be decrypted there.
But they also say it's zero-knowledge, so it's more than E2EE. They take the encrypted stream and write it directly to disk. Claiming E2EE is probably not what they wanted to convey.
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Did they halt their referrals?\
Tried your link and it doesn't seem to do anything.
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Clicking the link should not say anything special when you land on the page (which is rather dumb) but once you create your account you should get double the base free storage (20 instead of 10). I don't recall them announcing any change in that policy.
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Hey, if I cross post this to proton@lemmy.world, maybe Andy Yen will see it, it will light a fire under their collective asses, they'll drop everything else they're working on, labor long and hard, night and day, until the Linux client for Proton Drive is ready! Whaddaya think? 😉
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I started using the Linux application since proton doesn't have one. Works flawlessly. I just use the sync folders both ways setting. Haven't used notes or anything else.
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I would not recommend them; they have an insanely low price that I don't think is sustainable. I also use Linux, and it's not perfect, but I live with their website. They are also relatively new, which is a minus for me.
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Web and iOS client have lots of bugs. You’ll likely run into them very quickly. I wouldn’t rely on anything that’s uploaded there, or to even be uploaded.
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Same impression that I got and therefore decided to skip it.
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This is looking pretty promising so far, thanks to all who responded 👍
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As for me, I can't seem to be able to put Sync to work. Probably I am just dumb but I open Filen Linux app, set an empty folder on the cloud, set a local folder that contains the data I would like to backup and pick local to cloud schema.
As soon as I start sync it says everything is synced. Let it run for a night, nothing. Thougth it could be the local to cloud schema, so intentinally did some changes on local files still it did not trigger the process. So basically nothing is replicated from my local folder to the cloud.
Again, it is probably me being dumb but I genuine give up on automate my backups using Sync.
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If I set up Filen to sync my home folder to the cloud and I change VPN countries while it's syncing, is that likely to cause any technical or security problems?
EDIT: My tests would seem to indicate not, but what does everyone else think? Best practices?
23 comments