Sending dirty videos securely

August 16, 2009 11:26 AM

How can I send a dirty video securely?

Trying to send my partner an explicit video of myself. Too big for gmail, even zipped (73 unzipped, 57 zipped). I am wary of potentially unsecure, 3rd party services (e.g., yousendit). Any ideas?

posted by anonymous to technology (14 comments total)

When you zip it, password protect it. E-mail the password separately. Then send a link using whatever uploading service you'd like.
posted by Help, I can't stop talking! at 11:33 AM on August 16

Encrypt your video then send it through whatever method is most convenient. TrueCrypt is a fairly popular option.
posted by odinsdream at 11:33 AM on August 16

FTP.

Or, burn it to a cd/dvd and mail it.
posted by Houstonian at 11:34 AM on August 16

I would say go ahead and use those 3rd party services, but never let something like this out into the wild without using, say, WinRAR to encrypt the file. Crack programs do exist, but if you select a 17 character password that doesn't use common English words and uses 128 bit AES key encryption, it would take years to unencrypt it. Realistically nobody's going to bother doing that unless perhaps the Feds are specifically after your steamy videos.
posted by crapmatic at 11:34 AM on August 16

Yeah, seconding TrueCrypt too... I love that program.
posted by crapmatic at 11:35 AM on August 16

If you're on a Mac and they are too: Encrypted DMG
If you're on a Mac and they are on a PC: Truecrypt file container, as previously noted.
If you're on a PC and they are on Mac/PC: Also Truecrypt.

Then send the file with one of the private p2p file services (files aren't stored on an third party server). Here are some:
Pipebytes
FileAI.com
FilesOverMiles.com

Tell them the password over the phone. Don't put it in a plain text email.
posted by sharkfu at 11:42 AM on August 16 [1 favorite has favorites]

you could always re-compress the file using something like mpg streamclip
posted by mattsweaters at 11:58 AM on August 16

Send it to me and I'll encrypt it for you. :)

Seriously, sharkfu has the best model. Truecrypt or an AES-encrypted mini-volume are strong encryption. Putting a password on your compressed file is definitely not.

Use a passphrase rather than a word. Like, a complete sentence, 100 characters with some punctuation. If anyone DOES get a copy of it, you want it to be impossible to grind out a password even if they leave a computer running for months of trying. Yes, some people are that curious, and it's not so hard to try millions of combinations in the background.

And definitely passphrase over the phone.
posted by rokusan at 12:10 PM on August 16

57MB? The max file attachment for Gmail is 25MB. Since you'll have to split this up into 3 files, I'd aim for a 20MB file size for the first two and whatever the remainder for the last one.

I don't like WinRAR because it is too bulky and it makes you want to pay for it. Instead use 7Zip. Here's how to split a large file into smaller files using 7Zip.

7Zip encrypts it if you provide it with a password. It is very simple. Make sure you name the file something obscure like the date (8162009) so if anyone finds it they won't be too curious. Use strong password generator to generate a strong password. Make sure you send the password in another medium, like a text or over the phone. Otherwise if your e-mail or his e-mail becomes compromised you don't lose everything.

Keep in mind that this is all for nil if you breakup and he decides to send it to his friends. This just prevents someone from accidentally stumbling upon it. Also I'm sure he won't re-encrypt once he views it, so if his laptop gets stolen or he gives it to someone to repair there you are.

Sending the message securely really would be a secondary consideration for me, personally.

PS If you're really seeing compression of 73MB to 56MB you're probably not encoding your video in the best format. But that's another day.
posted by geoff. at 1:12 PM on August 16 [1 favorite has favorites]

Seriously, sharkfu has the best model. Truecrypt or an AES-encrypted mini-volume are strong encryption. Putting a password on your compressed file is definitely not.

7zip uses AES automatically if you add a password to the file. It is not simply adding a password to a file, encryption happens.
posted by geoff. at 1:14 PM on August 16

I'd RAR it into multiple volumes, you could make each ~9MB or so and each would fit as an attachment to a single gmail message.
posted by reptile at 1:35 PM on August 16

geoff. writes "Also I'm sure he won't re-encrypt once he views it, so if his laptop gets stolen or he gives it to someone to repair there you are."

This can be at least partially mitigated when you use truecrypt. Because you can use the software to mount the encrypted volume as a drive letter the system can access the encrypted files without ever leaving a decrypted copy around on the disk. As soon as truecrypt exits or the machine shuts down the unencrypted information is lost.

And you can both truecryt a volume and use 7zip to send it.

Though if it was me I'd just put the encrypted volume up on dedicated hosting like Nearly Free Speech. You don't even need to buy a domain and a $1 gets you a gigabyte of transfer.
posted by Mitheral at 3:04 PM on August 16

Once you have used encrypted the file then you could use dropbox to share it with your partner.
posted by sien at 3:59 PM on August 16

I am also wary of third party services, so when I wanted to do this, I enabled the FTP server on my Mac and had my partner log in and download the file directly. Some sort of password protection or encryption on top of that can't hurt, obviously.
posted by lholladay at 8:26 AM on August 17