Wuala: From alpha in 2007, acquisition by LaCie in 2009, to being deadpooled 2015
(Image by Chris Messina, CC-BY-NC-SA)

Wuala, the Swiss cloud storage service, is closing down. You need to switch services by 30 September when Wuala will become read-only, and remove all your data by 15 November when Wuala will shut down. If you need to move and want an alternative that is end-to-end encrypted (and you should) then Wuala suggests another Switzerland based company, Tresorit.

Last year I briefly contemplated and tested Wuala when I wanted to get out of Dropbox (which is unencrypted and under US law). At the time I wrote

“Wuala, incorporated in Switzerland, is owned by LaCie (incorporated in France) which in turn is owned by Seagate (incorporated in Ireland). Their data centers are geo-redundant and in France, Switzerland and Germany. Although that looks good on paper Seagate HQ is in the US, placing Seagate under the Patriot Act, and thus Wuala ultimately too. Wuala for the desktop requires Java, which is a bad thing. Their encryption and syncing however are a plus, as is the ability to work in teams.”

Wuala was my first two steps away from Dropbox, as it provided client side encryption removing most of the key privacy concerns:

For now I have started using Wuala, as it is at least two steps up from Dropbox because of its encryption and their data centers in Switzerland, Germany and France. Their service is not ‘patriot act proof’ (and they know it, judging by their consistently vague and indirect answers in support fora), but the encryption helps address that. Of course there is no real way to check their encryption either.

My Wuala use lasted all of 1 week. Then I switched to OwnCloud through an Austrian provider, OwnCube, and a month later I started running my own VPS with OwnCloud on it, removing me from using third party services except for the server itself. (I must say OwnCloud does not support end-to-end encryption yet, and uses server side encryption. Hoping to see that change in the future.)