My daughter is going to a school that uses Beast Academy for math which I overall think is great except that they do not provide any kind of app to do homework and everything needs to be done in a web browser. This works fine except that on a kid restricted tablet you generally do not have access to the web so I will be publishing a simple app that is just a wrapper for their website that I can then allow that in her profile and she can do math on her own table.
The privacy policy for this app is that I do not collect any data on the usage at all except what is collected by either Google, Amazon and Beast Academy themselves.
Unfortunately and predictably this app was only live for 1 day before I was (very nicely) asked to take it down by Beast Academy. It will shortly be replaced by a more generic application to solve the same problem.
The first stable version of Underscore Backup with support for the companion service is now available. The service itself is also now generally available and out of beta.
Even with the new service, the main focus of the application is privacy, resiliency, and efficiency. The new service does significantly simplify setting up cloud backups and sharing though compared to use
The main new feature in version 2.0 is the introduction of a companion service that will help with many aspects of running Underscore Backup such as.
Keep all your sources organized in one place to easily restore from any of your backups to any other backup.
Help facilitate sharing of backup data with other users.
Optionally allow private key password recovery.
Easily access application UI even if running in a context where a desktop is unavailable, such as root on Linux.
Use as a backup destination. Storing backup data is the only feature that requires a paying subscription, giving you 512GB of backup storage for $5 per month.
Support multiple regions of data storage supporting North America (Oregon), EU (Frankfurt), and Southeast Asia (Singapore) regions to satisfy latency and data governance requirements.
On top of the companion service changes, the following features and improvements have also been implemented.
Added support for continuous backups by monitoring the filesystem for changes.
Introduced a password strength meter which requires a score of at least “ok” when setting up.
Switched from pbkdf2 to Argon2 for private key hashing function.
On top of the companion service changes, the following features and improvements have also been implemented. Get started by downloading the client now.
The first release for the 2.0 beta has now been released and is available for download on for download from the Underscore Backup dedicated site at https://underscorebackup.com/.
The main new feature though is the introduction of this companion service that will help with many aspects of running Underscore Backup such as.
Keep all your sources organized in one place to easily restore from any of your backups to any other backup.
Help facilitate sharing of backup data with other users.
Optionally allow private key password recovery.
Easily access application UI even if running in a context where a desktop is unavailable, such as root on Linux.
Use as a backup destination. Storing backup data is the only feature that requires a paying subscription, giving you 512GB of backup storage per $5 per month.
Support multiple regions of data storage. Currently supporting Oregon, Frankfurt, and Singapore regions to satisfy latency and data governance requirements.
With this release, the registration for accounts on this service has also been opened.
On top of the companion service changes, the following features and improvements are implementing.
Switched from pbkdf2 to Argon2 for private key hashing function.
Introduced log rotation for the application log.
Move the schedule jitter onto a dedicated setting instead of a custom property and default to 1 hour.
Changed all references to passphrase to password.
Introduced a password strength meter which requires a score of at least “ok” when setting up.
Added detection of new versions and easily download and install from inside the application.
The one major feature planned before 2.0 is complete is to add continuous backup functionality.
Underscore Backup 2.0 still retains all the great features from version 1.x including privacy first focused asymmetric encryption, safe and secure backup sharing and flexible backup destination options.
Underscore Backup pre-release is available for immediate download from Github.
Public key based encryption allows continuously running backups that can only be read with a key not available on the server running the backup.
Pre-egress encryption means no proprietary data leaves your system in a format where it can be compromised as long as your private key is not compromised.
Runs entirely without a service component.
Designed from the ground up to manage very large backup sets with multiple TB of data and millions of file in a single repository.
Multi-platform support based on Java 8.
Low resource requirements, runs efficiently with only 128MB of heap memory.
Efficient storage of both large and small file with built in de-duplication of data.
Handles backing up large files with small changes in them efficiently.
Optional error correction to support unreliable storage destinations.
Encryption, error correction and destination IO are plugin based and easily extendable.
Currently supports local file and S3 for backup destinations.
Best of all it is available as open source for free under a GPLv3 license.
For now this software is still under heavy development and should not be relied upon to protect production data.
The Your Shared Secret service allows you to safely and securely ensure that private information that you have is not lost if you are in any way incapacitated.
The basic premise is that information is submitted through your browser where it is encrypted before it is ever sent to the service. The key to decrypt the information never leaves your browser. The key is then then chopped up into multiple pieces which are securely handed out to a number of people that you chose to act on your behalf and only by a group of them collaborating (You chose how many) can they together assemble the key required to access your information. For a quick introduction you can check out this video.
You have complete control over who of your caretakers is able to initiate accessing the information and also how many of the total group of caretakers need to participate to access the information. Even better the service does not even need know how to contact the caretakers. This information is only known by the unlocking caretaker and the owner of the information.
Furthermore the act of one of your caretakers trying to assemble the key will give you as the creator a notification that allows you to cancel the unlocking information or delete the information all together within a 7 days quarantine period. For more information on how the service works see the Usage section on the website.
The entire service operates on a zero trust model where all the functionality is ensured with cryptographically strong primitives with the single exception being the 7 day quarantine period. There is plenty of detailed information on how the encryption works in detail and how the service has been built. To ensure what is claimed on the site is actually what is happening the source code to the entire service is published on GitHub and you can even run the entire website locally by just cloning the website repository and just run.
npm start
The service is available for an introductory price of $1 or if you want to have completely anonymity you can also pay with either Etherium or Bitcoin although that is slightly more costly because of the value fluctuations of these currencies.
The service is available now so feel free to get started now keeping your information safe without you.
Underscore Research LLC 