If I pair my Android phone and my laptop, I can share files over Bluetooth from the phone to the laptop. I’ve started finding this a really convenient method for me to send files to a Linux laptop without needing to install a separate app on either the phone or my laptop. Especially when I’m away from my home network (I use SFTP at home).
How secure is this? Is there encryption by default and could someone else nearby with a receiver potentially decode the file you’re sending?
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
- 0 users online
- 124 users / day
- 1.05K users / week
- 1.3K users / month
- 4.58K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 3.35K Posts
- 85.3K Comments
- Modlog
https://pairdrop.net/
No, thanks:
What’s so bad about servers?
Both are open source.
The signaling server just sees the IPs of your devices and matches them by roomID.
The turn server sees only locally encrypted files and your IPs (and it is used only IF you are behind a NAT).
As far as I see, there is no way for anything bad happening, but I am happy to learn if you know something. If you need it for a proof, I’d gladly give you some of my IPs and encrypted files - see what you can do with them.
My concern is has more to do with metadata, wich can be collected. If there’s a local alternative or a self-hosted one for something, I’m more inclined to use these than something that depends on a third party.
You can selfhost PairDrop though. Including the signaling and turn server. It’s open source.
Ok, that’s great!
I’d rather not upload my files on remote servers. No matter if open source or no
The file does not get uploaded to remote servers. It passes through them, fully encrypted, and the server does not have the keys to decrypt your files.
If it passes through, that means it is present on the server’s storage, even if for a short period of time
All your data and traffic passes through various routers and servers (both of which are computers and have memory) while you do anything on the internet (You can find the list of such computers by doing a traceroute). But because it is end to end encrypted - you don’t care.
this is why i have developed my own cloud solution. a file server that i host myself
What does this mean vs uploaded?
It’s transient.