Database encrypted?
 

Hi,

Is the database encrypted? In case the iphone gets stolen, the userdata is safe?

Best regards
Alex

No, we don't do any encryption of the data. If this is important to you (as it presumably is, since you're asking about it), please email [email]omnifocus-iphone@omnigroup.com[/email] to register your request.

Added my vote for this. Bare minimum would be to add a password/code entry option to prevent access to the database on the phone.

Is the user password that is sent to mobile me encrypted?

[QUOTE=SpiralOcean;45050]Is the user password that is sent to mobile me encrypted?[/QUOTE]

Yes, I believe so. Communications with MobileMe's iDisk is done over HTTPS. Which means your data is transmitted securely as well.

However, once the data arrives on Apple's servers, it's vulnerable to unscrupulous Apple employees or contractors. And, if you've syncing with your iPhone, the data could be accessed by anyone who steals your phone (or your Mac, for that matter).

-Dennis

That's a relief... I assumed it was secure, but didn't know for sure.

I wonder if it would be possible to create an encrypted sparse bundle disk image that OF could reside in on the Apple server. Much like how filevault works for users.

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_disk_image[/url]

[QUOTE=SpiralOcean;45068]I wonder if it would be possible to create an encrypted sparse bundle disk image that OF could reside in on the Apple server. Much like how filevault works for users.[/QUOTE]

You could create and upload an encrypted disk image with your data on it, but the problem is getting the server to mount the image. So while encrypted disk images are a good way to do secure backups, they're not a good option for data you want to regularly work with (i.e. sync to OmniFocus).

-Dennis

Yes, MobileMe's WebDAV uses HTTPS and is secure. Other WebDAV servers may or may not use HTTPS. If they don't use HTTPS, they may at least use Digest authentication, to secure the login info. Personally, I'm very reluctant to sent this kind of data around unencrypted, so having HTTPS is important for me, which is why I use MobileMe (as opposed to the hosting provider which I use for my personal web site, which requires additional cost if I want HTTPS, and I already have MobileMe for other reasons).

Ahh... right... there was a mention in that Wiki article about Sparse Bundle's being banded in 8mb chunks and those can be synced. So maybe it could be synced computer to computer, but I doubt it can be opened on the iPhone. And 8mb is a lot of data to send. The OF sync now is splendidly fast.

Just brainstorming here...

[QUOTE=SpiralOcean;45077]there was a mention in that Wiki article about Sparse Bundle's being banded in 8mb chunks and those can be synced.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, that banding technique is really handy, especially if you're dealing with disk images (sparse bundles) that are hundreds of megabytes, or even gigabytes. Without the banding, you'd have to transfer the entire disk image even if you only changed a single byte. Now, you only have to transfer 8 MB, which is still not perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than transferring the whole thing!

To do data syncing with the disk image, it'd have to be mounted on the iDisk. But Apple doesn't allow MobileMe subscribers to run any executables on the server, so there's no way for your disk image to get automatically mounted there.

But you could probably store the disk image on your iDisk, mount it locally on your Mac, and then sync OmniFocus data to it as if it were a local disk. However, you'd still have no way to get the data synced to your iPhone, since we can't mount the disk image on the iDisk server and the iPhone itself has no support for mounting disk images. So we're right back to where we started. :(

-Dennis