Sharing encrypted Google Drive files
How to use Syncdocs to share sensitive data
You can easily use Syncdocs to share sensitive data between:
1.) many PC’s all syncing to the same account, or
2.) many users using Google Drive shared folders
With the current AES-256 symmetric encryption, all the users or PC’s need to have the same password, otherwise the encrypted files will not be downloaded.
1. Syncing many PC’s
If you have many PC’s all syncing to the same account, setup the same password and encrypted folders on all these PC’s and your files will automatically be decrypted and encrypted on sync.
If you want the PC’s to automatically detect encrypted folders, then click on the following option in the encrypted Folder selection menu:
If this option is not checked, and the folder is not set by the user as encrypted, then encrypted files in this folder will be ignored and not synced.
If another PC does not have the correct password, then the user will be shown a warning message. After that encrypted files will be ignored in future, until the correct password is set.
2. Syncing encrypted folders with other users
You can share encrypted folders with other users, as long as you have the same password. Share the folder as you normally would, using Syncdocs right click menu, or Google’s online menu.
The other user (to whom the folder is shared) needs to allow decryption of shared folders in the encrypted Folder selection menu:
Once selected, any changes made to files in these encrypted folders are synced, just as normal files are synced.
3. Turning off shared encrypted syncing on a folder
For security reasons, it is not possible for just one side of the encryption to turn off syncing. Both must either:
1. turn it off at the same time, or
2.turn off the automatic mode in section 1 above.
This is because encrypted files take precedence over un-encrypted files in automatic mode.