File Storage. It’s a concept that goes back essentially to the beginning of the computer industry. While information was originally stored on analog media such as paper punch cards, storage really took a big leap forward in the 1950s when magnetic storage began appearing on the scene. This ignited a race in storage density, leading to more and more storage capacity on smaller and smaller storage devices. Throughout this race though, all of these advances shared one common element: local storage. In other words, you would create a file with your computer’s operating system, and that file would be stored on a hard drive physically attached to that computer.

While network storage had been a fairly standard element of larger corporate organizations, it generally still required users to connect to the corporate network to utilize the storage. As for small businesses and consumers, they were generally still trapped to attached physical devices. All of that began to change in the late 2000’s. While a few services had poked around at this area earlier (such as XDrive), the idea of cloud storage really exploded with the arrival of startup players Dropbox and Box.net. The rapid consumer adoption of these services grabbed the attention of the tech industry, and soon players like Google (Drive), Microsoft (OneDrive) and others appeared. Now, file storage was no longer limited to your physical device, and powered by the Internet, your files could be accessed anywhere, from any device.

If you’re an avid Practical Privacy reader though, you’ll know where this is heading. Along with Internet services and big data inherently comes a potential loss of privacy. With all of your files being stored on someone else’s data center, it’s hard to know exactly what information is being scanned, and how it might potentially be used. Fear not though; using my favorite new technology (VPS) and through the power of open source, a great alternative with better privacy exists: NextCloud.

Ironically, we’ve come full-circle on data storage. Update the furnishings a bit, and this could easily be a modern data center.

What Is NextCloud?

NextCloud is a web-based file-hosting service, meaning that you can access the service through a web browser or app on your phone, and use it to store or retrieve your personal files. If you’ve used any of the cloud storage services listed above (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.), you’ll already have a good idea of what NextCloud is all about. In addition to storing files, you can also expand what NextCloud can do by installing add-ons to support tasks like note-taking, calendars, and even video conferencing. Depending on how you choose to use it, NextCloud can scale from a basic file storage tool, all the way up to a full productivity suite.

NextCloud has a top-notch, professional presence online.

How Does This Help With Privacy?

All of these services are of course available from the major tech players, but the big difference is that the software used to run NextCloud is open source. This gives NextCloud a leg up in terms of both privacy and security because:

The open source nature means that the code used to run NextCloud is being audited by thousands of developers around the world (more secure). By being in charge of the server used to host your NextCloud instance, you have much more control over who has access to the information (more privacy).

By installing NextCloud on a VPS, the only one with access to the data is you, and potentially the VPS host. For the truly paranoid, you can even host it on your own hardware server at home. How private you choose to keep your data is completely up to you, but the important part is that you are the one who gets to decide.

NextCloud is open source, meaning you can install it anywhere, and the code is constantly audited for security issues.

How To Get It

Installing NextCloud on an Ubuntu 18.04 VPS is quite easy, utilizing the Snappy packaging system. For a great step-by-step tutorial, this guide from DigitalOcean is all you need, but a general overview of the process looks like this:

Download and install NextCloud via Snap. Set up your administrative account with a username and password. Set up a domain (or sub-domain) to use with NextCloud (optional, you CAN access it directly via IP address). Add your domain as a trusted domain. Secure NextCloud with SSL (either via the free Let’s Encrypt or self-signed certificate).

That’s it. After that, you simply access your NextCloud instance via a web browser or Android / iOS app, log in, and you’re all set to start saving your files on your own private cloud!

I forgot to take a screenshot while installing NextCloud, so here’s a random picture from a web search of the process in action. Thrilling!

Alternative Options

If you’re looking for some alternative, open source, self-hosted options for cloud storage besides NextCloud, there are a few mainstream choices available:

OwnCloud. NextCloud actually is a fork of OwnCloud, so the services are very similar, though it seems the community has gravitated a bit more to NextCloud. Cozy Cloud. Another option, though not quite as refined of a user experience vs. NextCloud or OwnCloud.

Parting Thoughts

When it comes to privacy online, most conversations typically focus on topics like web search history and photos, rather than file storage. That’s a shame, because not only is some of our most sensitive data stored in files, but there are some really high-quality, privacy-minded solutions available. Probably the biggest drawback to self-hosted private cloud storage (other than a bit of complexity in setup) is the amount of storage space you get for the price. In general, 100GB of storage space on a VPS will cost about the same as 1TB of storage space on one of the commercial services. If you need that much cloud storage, and you find the price of hosting on a VPS to be prohibitive, you’ll likely be stuck using one of the non-private solutions. For most people though, 50–100GB of storage space is probably a decent option in 2018.

Hopefully you enjoyed this article! To get some more great Practical Privacy tips, check out my other articles!