Cryptee was founded in 2017, by John Ozbay, a cybersecurity researcher, commenter, and activist,[1] to exclusively focus on providing a secure document editing service similar to Google Docs and Photos for everyone, with a particular focus on victims and survivors of domestic abuse, journalists and reporters.[2]
Software
Users can write personal documents, notes, journals, store images, videos, and various kinds of other files.[3][2][4][5]
The source code of Cryptee is open source and publicly available to allow anyone to audit the service with ease, and help identify errors or potential vulnerabilities in a public and transparent manner.[6][3][4]
Cryptee has a few key features that differentiate it from other services in the industry, such as its Ghost Folders and Ghost Albums features, built specifically with victims and survivors of domestic abuse, journalists and reporters in mind.
The company's commercial strategy is focused on offering to its users an open source and transparent Photo Storage, Document Editor and Cloud Storage services without trackers or advertisements [5] as it seeks to compete with Google Docs,[11]Google Photos[3] and similar services through its offerings.
In the following weeks after Apple's announcement, in August 2022, the Founder and CEO of Cryptee, and privacy activist John Ozbay published their research detailing shortcoming of Apple's Lockdown Mode.
They demonstrated that enabling Lockdown Mode makes it possible for all websites and online ads to be able to detect if users have Lockdown Mode enabled or not. This was due to the fact that disabling web fonts (an attack surface) was detectable by websites.[1][16][17][18][19]
To better understand the consequences of Apple's decision to kill web apps, the EU announced that they "seek to investigate Apple over cutting off web apps", and that they sent "requests for information to Apple and to app developers, who can provide useful information for our assessment".[25]
Apart from sending a response to the EU, Cryptee, along with the OWA, launched an open letter to Tim Cook, which in 48 hours, got thousands of signatories including European Parliament MembersKaren Melchior and Patrick Breyer; and thousands of other developers and organizations from over 100 countries.[26][27]
Consequently, 24 hours later, Apple backed off, and reversed course on its plan to cut off progressive web apps in the EU.[28][29][30][31][32][33][34]
At the hearing, OWA confronted Apple, accused Apple of "maliciously intending to undermine user choice", and stated that there was no defense for Apple's behavior. In response, according to the tech news outlet Ars Technica, Apple's spokesperson "seemed to dodge Ozbay's question".[35][36][37][38]
"Being based in Estonia puts Cryptee outside the “14 eyes jurisdiction,” an international surveillance alliance of European Union and North American countries, making it less likely it will be targeted with demands for data".
In addition, the review highlighted Cryptee's Ghost Folders feature which ensures privacy even under coercion.[2]
In a 2019 article, Reclaim The Net named Cryptee as one of the "5 great privacy-focused Evernote alternatives to keep your notes safe", underlining that:
"When it comes to security, this app is state of the art."
and that
"When making this app, the developers thought about every aspect of security and have taken every precaution to make it as secure as possible.".
The review further underscored Cryptee's open-source nature, its strong encryption, and easy migration features.[4]
In a 2021 article, The Verge reviewed Cryptee, pointing out that Cryptee, based out of Europe, is one of the main photo storage service alternatives to Google Photos, and that it's their recommendation for users who are "concerned about privacy and like the idea of encryption" as Cryptee "offers to keep all your photos encrypted using AES-256".[3]
In a 2024 article, Beebom, enlisted Cryptee as one of the "7 best iCloud Photos Alternatives for iPhone and iPad", complimenting Cryptee's simplicity, its use of encryption to safeguard users' photos against hacking by not storing any unencrypted data.
The article also provided further attention to Cryptee's additional features such as such as Ghost Albums, slideshows, easy-to-use drag and drop uploads, tagging and users' ability to store original-quality photos on Cryptee, concluding that Cryptee is "a safe bet if you are on the lookout for a privacy-centric iCloud Photos alternative".[7]
