| >That's an interesting point. There may be some value
| >in encryption, and some companies -- like Google and MS --
| >have been going through the motions of setting that up.
|
| Why do they have to set it up? Encrypting files is no big deal.
| There's freeware that does a fine job of it.
|
There are different uses of encryption. I think I remember
reading that Google and MS were encrypting their webmail.
Some email is encrypted. Some is not. Some is optional.
The main role of that is just to protect the content from
sniffing or man-in-the-middle attacks as it goes between
servers. That won't stop big companies from handing over
your data to the NSA or to their business partners.
If you want to *really* encrypt email it needs to be
dealt with on both ends.
It sounds like what you're talking about is encryption for
files on Dropbox. Yes, you can use something like PGP on
those. All I'm saying is that encryption is not a total solution
to the problem of someone else holding your files in cloud
services.