Using Nextcloud for Privacy - Your own Cloud Storage, Shared Contacts and Calendar

if you've been using google drive google photos google docs icloud microsoft onedrive dropbox and so on you're actively sharing your private information with someone else for example google can read your documents for profiling information and they've publicly said that they do facial recognition on your google photos same with icloud apple looks to see who your friends are so they can share photos so i personally do not use these cloud services because they actively collect my data or may not secure my data today we'll talk about an alternative and it's called next cloud next cloud is private this will be your own cloud server which can be either be available only at your home or available on the internet but you control it you secure your own data i'll talk about why this is a better solution for you and also what it can do then later on on this video we will actually set up a next cloud server on lenode which is a cloud provider and i will show you how easy it is to get it started stay tuned [Music] i'm on the library platform lbry in addition to youtube i posted in advance of youtube i'm in the top 50 creators on that platform so join me there as well there's a link at the bottom of the description now i've actually never used nexcloud before and the reason is that i have my own cloud app bracks.me and i use it for photo and file storage myself i handle all the encryption and security and it's been really good for me but even when i have a place to store files and photos having a next cloud server still different because it has extensive applications and multi-device support and that's why i set up one for myself as well nexcloud is an open source cloud-based application for storing your files photos documents contacts and a calendar and you can interact with other people on your server using other apps that you can install it can be shared with others like your family or your small business you control everything you control who gets to share the data and limit the sharing and you encrypt the data so even your cloud provider does not get to capture any of it by the way if there are next cloud experts out there who may want to add more tidbits of information please do so in the comments below i think this is a great solution for privacy but it does have a learning curve so it's hard to absorb everything in a few days but i want to make sure i discuss this because i think it offers a lot for privacy-minded people what is really interesting about nexcloud is that you can use it instead of a shared ftp server which actually has no security and by the way next cloud is actually supported by some good apps that exist on ios android windows macs and linux the apps really integrate well with the os it's an entire infrastructure for data sharing within your next cloud group this is a really practical privacy solution because ever so slowly we are giving away our privacy in little pieces these other cloud services are really there to collect your information one of the insidious uses of the cloud for example is google drive and google docs students at universities share all of their information writing their term papers and pass it around on google drive and google docs google has successfully invaded the habits of young kids who will likely continue to use these products as they get into the real world chromebooks use google cloud in grade school the reason everyone uses google docs and so on is because of convenience and ease of use now there's an alternative with nexcloud and it's easy to use and well supported on all platforms next cloud is actually a fork from another product called own cloud so if you prefer to use on cloud you can do that as well but at the moment it appears that next cloud has become more popular than the original and the support on multiple platforms is excellent nexcloud can be installed two ways at your house or at a cloud provider if you install it at your house by default you will not be able to access it remotely without some additional configuration of your router and it can also be slower and less secure that way if used from the internet now fused only inside your house it will be quite fast on your local network and everyone will be able to use it on your home wi-fi in fact this is the fastest solution if you're using it primarily from your home it really depends on who you're sharing documents photos contacts and calendars with for most households syncing calendars photos and files automatically at night is good enough and you don't need it over the internet obviously this is a more secure solution since no one from the outside can see your data there's also an excellent use for this for security if you watch my other videos on setting up a computer i always expect that i have to factory reset my computer on a regular basis or if you watch my video on virtual machines you can run a disposable virtual machine to connect to your office for example but you always want to access your data conveniently and that's what next cloud provides it provides seamless access to your next cloud files through the file manager on your phone or computer your data is available on any device you can sync automatically so you don't have to think about any manual operation after it's set you never have to worry about multiple ways of passing data from device to device sometimes in some non-secure way like email with nexcloud all devices can see all the files at the same time calendars and contact lists can also be automatically synced then you use your devices just like i recommend which is to put as little data on the phone or computer as possible push your data to a separate secured server by the way auto syncing calendars and contact lists using caldav for calendars and card dab for contacts is not some simple thing to do it uses a common protocol called webdav to sync calendars and contacts and you have to configure each device to do all this unfortunately i can't teach you all this in this video so you'll have to learn how to do it for each device syncing files though is simple enough the next cloud architecture is really simple it is basically just a linux server running apache to a database and the next cloud code is just php and it is open source now if you're not a linux server expert it is tedious to install so that's why later on i will pre-make it for use with a raspberry pi you can then decide to buy as large an external drive as you need to store the files for it and it should be easy to upgrade simply by copying files from an old drive to a new drive there are no hidden tricks in the file system of next cloud so it should be as simple as moving your typical directories and files if you use for example a file manager sometimes that's what i hate with things like apple's time machine for backup and other proprietary formats they keep making it more complicated by obscuring the data in the case of nexcloud from what i've seen it's really simple and easy to understand for someone with moderate computer skills just to show you i will ssh into my next cloud server and show you where the data is it's basically in var www next cloud data and admin is my username so it's in that subdirectory so each user keeps their own data files you can share directories by the way and also share them externally with links now obviously there's a gui for looking at these files which you will see later but this just removes the mystery of the file structure files can be shared to a group using a group sharing add-on just an fyi again the main advantage of nexcloud versus just leaving a shared hard drive on your network is that it is integrated with apps for ios android max linux and windows similar to dropbox which means all your devices can coexist your family can have a mix of ios and android phones and your multiple devices can share data very easily as simply as dragging files from a file manager here's an example of the interface on android this is the next cloud app itself this is where you can look at the next cloud files as well as setup syncing rules for example i've set up to sync a pictures folder here's the app in android for syncing contacts and calendars it is called dav x5 and it is basically routing its data requests through the next cloud app also next cloud is integrated directly into the files app so you can move files directly to and from nexcloud and here's a quick view of it from ios ios doesn't have a file system so in order to pass a file to next cloud you have to do a share to the next cloud app also on ios it has this neat feature of allowing the recreation of a document like voice file or even doing a scan like a photo copy machine this is pretty cool and it makes it simpler to pass documents like tax returns from device to device on windows the app basically handles the syncing but the actual files are just directly integrated into file manager so nothing special to do this is also true on android where you can access the files directly using the files app without using the next cloud app so the windows app is more about performing the syncing of files most of your interactions with other nexcloud features will be through the browser at least that's what i know so far if there's other ways that someone else knows i'm not an expert at this so please share your knowledge in the comments as far as your file syncing goes you actually designate a folder on your computer for syncing with your next cloud so whatever you put in this folder will be shared across all your devices so just place a file in this folder and all the syncing is done automatically and here let me show you how you run next cloud from a browser let me go through the top tabs files photos activities talk mail which i didn't use contacts and calendar next cloud is popular enough that many third parties have actually built apps that are integrated into it let me just show you their little app store so you can see the kinds of things you can add on to your next cloud installation i'll click on a few of these apps to see how you can tweak your experience [Music] [Music] [Music] the next thing we're going to do is to set up a small next cloud server in the cloud using lenode as the cloud provider there's a promotion link in the description where you can get a 60 or 68 credit if you use lenod using that link so check that out doing this on the node is an excellent way to learn how to use this without having to set up your server the cost to play with it for a month is only five dollars even if you intend to set up a home server this will be a cool way to learn i'm sure i've created dozens of next clouds by now using this method on lenode if you set up an account with lenod you will see this lenode dashboard here so to set up my next cloud server i go to marketplace and then i'll pick nexcloud they really made it simple here this is mindlessly simple and if you make a mistake you can delete the server instance and do it again they charge you by the hour so it's like a few cents spent and you get to learn once you select next cloud you just scroll down and fill in the required fields now you have to be careful here to write down what the values are because it has to match your configuration of your next cloud later first enter your mysql database password and the database user password you can just keep this the same during testing just don't make it ludicrously simple so you don't get hacked remember this is in the cloud now remember this the name of the database is nextcloud and the name of the database user is nexcloud just leave that alone i skipped the rest of this then i go to host name i will leave that at next cloud in my case i already have a domain in dns provider so i'm going to use my dns here instead of what is offered by lenode but my domain is bracks.me so when this server fires up i have to take note of the ip address and update my dns for nextcloud.prox.me on my dns provider the dns is important for use over the internet in order to get https for your connection the mobile app interfaces will use https regardless using a self-science certificate but if you're going to use the browser to configure it it needs to have https enabled you can put your email on there for notifications and it's very important to check the box free cert bot ssl certificate to get https then pick your time zone which i will leave alone in your region i will select california for the light use of most people even this nano option is good enough and that's five dollars a month as you can see by the way you could set up two next clouds one for internet sharing with some files like this and another home based dexcloud that could have a lot more storage and you can have a multi-terabyte external storage for your home server last i need the root password now it's important that you don't use some password like password here your computer will be hacked in minutes so keep it reasonable even for testing this is the ssh password to control the server so be careful that's it now just hit the create button and within a couple of minutes your node will be running to start again you can delete your node like this hit the three dots and then select delete then start again there's a link in the description where lynode kindly gave you a promotion for 60 dollars of a credit and 60 days free so use that when trying it out once your server is fired up and your dns is updated you can then call up your server and then you'll be able to administer it it's pretty simple in my case my server is next cloud dot prox dot me and i'll be presented with a login screen i log in and then i have to configure the server for you for the first time make sure you use the same values [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] out [Music] the final step click on your account icon on the right to get access to settings and you can change your security settings here now this is important in a cloud environment you may want to encrypt your files so go to administration security settings then you'll see server side encryption you may want to enable that here just be careful with this the encryption is based on your credentials so if you forget your username password then you will never be able to decrypt also as it says encryption decryption takes resources so it will slow it down a bit by the way you do not need to do this encryption on a home next cloud since you control your own server because next cloud is very popular now it has a large community with people developing apps and integrating other functionality into it and that's actually the main advantage of nexcloud over just installing a plain ftp server at your house there are sick apps for every device and integrating it into file manager makes it invisible and it's your own stuff and not visible to another party so i'm glad to be presenting you with another practical solution to improving your privacy in the next few weeks because of user requests i will make a hard drive available that is pre-loaded with nexcloud and you just have to plug it into a raspberry pi 4 so you can make your next cloud server at home my store is on the brax me app if you like this video i hope you hit the like button and subscribe to this channel and maybe you'll want to hit that notification bell as well thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rob Braxman Tech

Views: 82,213

Keywords: Internet, internet privacy, internet privacy guy, nextcloud, nextcloud review, how to install nextcloud, linode, nextcloud on linode, privacy cloud, your own cloud storage, dropbox, google docs, google drive, google photos, microsoft onedrive, icloud, private cloud, google drive alternative, dangers of google drive, cloud backup services, how to install nextcloud server, how to install nextcloud server on ubuntu 18.04, nextcloud android, nextcloud ios, nextcloud fdroid

Id: kmYtL60qcWM

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020