I’m vaguely interested in having a few different encrypted folders on my computer, with different passwords on each. I don’t have any particular strong requirements. It’s more of a velleity; mostly just to try it so that I know more about it.
That said, when I search for encryption options, I see a lot of different advice from different times. I’m seeings stuff about EncFS, eCryptFS, CryFS; and others… and I find it a bit confusing because to me all those names look basically the same; and it’s not easy for me to tell whether or not the info I’m reading is out of date.
So figure I’d just ask here for recommendations. The way I imagine it, I want some encrypted data on my computer with as little indication of what it is as possible; and but with a command and a password I can then access it like a normal drive or folder; copying stuff in or out, or editing things. And when I’m done, I unmount it (or whatever) and now its inaccessible and opaque again.
I’m under the impression that there are a bunch of different tools that will do what I’ve got in mind. But I’m interested in recommendations (since most of the recommendations I’ve seen on the internet seem to be from years ago, and for maybe slightly different use-cases).
What’s your threat model?
Personally I think full disk encryption with LUKS is the only worthwhile setup. Directory-based encryption software tends to be error-prone, and is much more vulnerable.
One advantage of directory-based encryption is for online backups. I use SpiderOak to backup some stuff, and so I can tell it backup my encrypted data without it ever seeing the unencrypted data. I don’t think that’s so easy with full-disk encryption. (I suspect only a handful people in the world still use SpiderOak, but the idea applies to whatever cloud backup thing you might use.)
Similarly, it means I can lend a portable HDD to someone to share videos or something, but still have private stuff stored on there as well if I want to.