EncFS - Securely encrypt important dataSection: Other | Actuality: Unspecified
In our turbulent times it is better to encrypt everything. First, computers became powerful enough to carry out on-the-fly encryption without performance loss. Second, you never know when the people in uniform will cut out the door and carry your system unit. Today consider the simplest and very effective way to protect your data - EncFS.
EncFS is a file system in user space (FUSE), which is transparent encryption. You only need to enter the password, everything else takes care of EncFC. In contrast to the sham data protection type BitLocker, EncFS uses proven industry standard encryption without any bookmarks, backdoors and spare keys for the government. Source code is available EncFS allows anyone to verify this.
Install the EncFS encryption:
Among Linux users a new school it is not accepted, but still after installation it is recommended to read the documentation:
sudo apt install encfs libpam-encfs
How to use encryption with EncFS in Linux Mint
First we need to create two directories. One for the physical storage of encrypted files, and the other to use as the mount point. Create them in your home directory:
Directory names of course can be other
mkdir -p ~/.private ~/private
Creating an encrypted file system EncFS for created directories:
in the process of creating select expert mode: "x" - We are asked to select the mode and set a password. Then EncFS will be ready to work. In addition, you will have the opportunity to choose the encryption algorithm name "Null" - thus, files will have familiar names and will not re sync when using different computers.
encfs ~/.private ~/private
When you enter a password, do not forget to choose it equal to the password of the login user in the system, not to forget the password otherwise you risk losing data.
NOTE: never delete a file named .encfs6.xml, it contains information about the encryption settings, if you lose the file, will not restore your data back
To unmount the encrypted directory:
fusermount -u ~/private
all necessary features of EncFS present in this GUI. After starting the program will not open any window, you need to find an applet application on the panel.
sudo apt install cryptkeeper
In CryptKeeper you can create a new encrypted folder or import already created by us through the terminal.
Don't forget to check the program settings, enter the name of your file manager, I have (Linux Mint Cinnamon), so my file manager is nemo.
Hope this article helped you to understand this question. You can for example synchronize a folder /.private with any cloud drive such as google drive. No one will be able to read out your private information!
May the Force be with you,