We all need cloud storage. Yeah, storage that is on someone else's computers. Today, storing your files or documents on the cloud is at risk, thanks to unethical companies that may either use your files to train their machine learning models, or provide access to your files to other companies. Frankly, I do not believe that these companies will ever protect our files, so it is up to us to make sure that our files are protected, but how?
First, we should invest in our own storage. Hard disk drives (HDDs) and Solid-state drives (SSDs) are more affordable now. Having your own drives, internal or external, will provide you with better protection that storing on the cloud. On the other hand, since the storage is local, you might have issues connecting to it when you are outside of your network. There are, of course, ways of making your locally hosted drives accessible on the cloud, but unless you have the technical know-how, I urge you not to do it.
Some broadband routers come with a service that exposes a connected drive or two, but I don't trust the way they secure it. Frankly, having a VPN connection to your home network is more secure than using your broadband router's services. Personally, I have a small external, portable HDD attached to one of my Wi-Fi access points, but it is only available on the local network. I have a WireGuard VPN server and Tailscale mess network, which I can use to access from outside my local network.
Whilst having your storage hosted locally, under your full control, provides the most privacy, the convenience is a bit less than having storage on the cloud. I have several cloud-based storage, but I still worry about providers abusing their powers and using my files for some other purpose that will give them revenue. To give me some peace of mind, an end-to-end encryption policy is the key. If your cloud provider does not have that, then ditch it, or do something about it.
Since I am on the Apple eco-system, iCloud is the main service that I subscribe to - to store files and other data (I share a 2TB iCloud storage with family members). Apple provides Advanced Data Protection (ADP) service that enables end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on more of their services, with iCloud Drive being included (see this for more information, including the limitations). With ADP enabled, I trust that Apple does not have access to my files.
Work provided me with access to Google's Drive and Microsoft's OneDrive. I use it mostly for work-related files, and as much as possible, I refrain from using it for personal use.
In addition, I have 1TB on Koofr and 2TB on Internxt. These are lifetime subscriptions, so no need to pay monthly. Both of these services provide end-to-end encryption, which ticks that box for privacy-preserving feature. I also love that Internxt has a command-line interface, and support for WebDAV protocol, making it easy to manage.
With the exception of Google Drive and OneDrive, my cloud storage services are pretty much taken cared of. However, I am still a bit paranoid when it comes to making sure that nobody else can access my files. To solve this, I use Cryptomator and rclone.org. With these two services, files that I store on Koofr, Internxt, and even Google Drive and OneDrive, are all encrypted. There is no way these providers can take a peek inside my files!
Oh, I almost forgot, I also have my self-hosted NextCloud instance. This is used mostly for sharing files or documents with family, friends and colleagues. Moving files from one to the other is made simpler by rclone.org.
How about you? Do you encrypt your files or documents when storing it on someone else's computers?