Thoughts about Joplin Cloud

Support
1

Operating system

macOS

Joplin version

2.14.17

Desktop version info

OSX 14.2.1

Sync target

Joplin Cloud

Editor

Markdown Editor

What issue do you have?

I'm thinking about Joplin Cloud vs. Dropbox -- I'd love to have the capability to use email-to-note in Joplin, but I also feel like Dropbox may be more secure from a redundancy point of view. Then again, we know that Joplin Cloud is hosted in Paris, but we don't know where Dropbox is hosted -- still, we assume that Dropbox is more secure...

Earlier today I tried synching with Dropobox and there were some unresolving synch errors... I thought of uninstalling Joplin but couldn't find any uninstall instructions..

2

A few extra thoughts on this:

  • No service is 100% secure.

  • It's possible that Dropbox is more secure than Joplin Cloud (they have way more resources than we do). But since they are more well known they are also a bigger target. Hackers are more interested in finding a zero-day there since they can get a bounty (or sell the exploit). A zero-day in Joplin Cloud would be worth a lot less, especially since most of the data is encrypted.

  • In general I'd say the web is more secure these days. Most "hacks" start with social engineering and Dropbox and Joplin Cloud are probably equally "vulnerable" to this.

  • We are going to add support for MFA soon which would make the service more secure.

  • From a redundancy point of view, there are daily backups of Joplin Cloud and the database is replicated in a different zone so as to be ready in case of a catastrophic event (such as a data center burning down, as it happens to OVH in France a few years ago). But also all your data is on your device and you can create a local backup of it yourself. That way even if there is a problem with Joplin Cloud you are sure not to lose anything.

3

Thank you for this thoughtful reply!