{"id":2718,"date":"2021-11-02T00:43:50","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T23:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saskialund.de\/?p=2718"},"modified":"2026-03-26T18:22:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:22:38","slug":"data-cloud-dsgvo-compliant-an-alternative-to-dropbox-google-drive-one-drive-and-consorten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isla-stud.io\/en\/ratgeber\/daten-cloud-dsgvo-konform-eine-alternative-zu-dropbox-google-drive-one-drive-und-konsorten\/","title":{"rendered":"Data cloud GDPR-compliant? An alternative to Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive and the like."},"content":{"rendered":"

I have integrated the Dropbox cloud service into my infrastructure for many years:
All backups, customer assets (graphics, images, text files and documents, Excel lists and database exports) that were required for the development of web projects were saved in my Dropbox.
It was easy to share data with my clients using the Dropbox sharing functionality. Collaboration on documents was possible and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So as a freelance developer, I bought a business plan from Dropbox: the Professional plan with 3TB storage volume and lots of great features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Dropbox<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After the new GDPR regulations came into force in the EU in May 2018, I contacted Dropbox customer service to find out how I could use Dropbox as a business customer in a GDPR-compliant manner in future. I was informed that solutions would be made available shortly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, however, the EU Privacy Shield agreement was ultimately only invoked and no solution was provided. For companies and individual businesses based in the EU, it ended up being a legal gray area. To this day, Dropbox refers to this in its privacy policy<\/a> to the resolution passed on 16.07.2020 by the ECJ invalidates EU Privacy Shield with legal effect<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Although EU standard contractual clauses have now been integrated into Dropbox's data protection guidelines, this is unfortunately not sufficient for Dropbox to be used as a German company. The locations of the servers on which the data is stored must also be in the EU. And it is precisely this data migration to a server in the EU that Dropbox only offers under the following conditions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. You must subscribe to at least the Business Standard tariff<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. At least 10 users must be booked<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. A subscription with annual billing must be taken out<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The Dropbox in my Business Professional plan with only one user is not sufficient for this. The annual price for Business Professional is \u20ac 198.96 \/ year, but the annual price for the above-mentioned minimum tariff for \u201csomehow\u201d GDPR-compliant operation of Dropbox is at least \u20ac 1200 \/ year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I only received this information from Dropbox Business Support a few days ago. I then researched ways to still be able to use Dropbox in a GDPR-compliant way - even without being able to migrate my data to the EU. In the process, I found a very promising tool called Boxcryptor<\/a>. Boxcryptor first encrypts the data before storing it in Dropbox. The operating company has its headquarters and server location in Germany, an ISO\/IEC 27001:2013-certified data center and can also securely encrypt the data that is to be stored in iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and many other US cloud providers (currently 30 providers are supported) in advance, thus protecting it from unauthorized access. Info about Boxcryptor<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Boxcryptor also offers a sharing service that makes it possible to share encrypted files via a share link - very similar to the native Dropbox file sharing function. The Sharing service from Boxcryptor is called Whisply<\/a> and works browser-based.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A great idea in itself and very functional. But I found this \u201cworkaround\u201d cumbersome during testing. And my customers were still not guaranteed an EU server location. However, some insisted on this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So there was only one option for me: ditch Dropbox and store my work data on a self-hosted server in Germany. So I went in search of an open source cloud storage script that would <\/p>\n\n\n\n