Security and privacy

No server in the middle

CloudMount connects your device straight to your storage. There’s no CloudMount server that sees your files, file names, sign-ins or passwords. OAuth sign-ins (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and others) happen between your browser and the service, and the resulting token is stored on your device, and in Android’s encrypted backup if System backup is on. The privacy policy has the details.

Your drive configuration

CloudMount keeps your drives in a standard rclone configuration file, rclone.conf, which holds each drive’s settings, sign-in tokens and passwords. rclone obscures the passwords in it, which stops someone reading them at a glance but is not encryption. On top of that:

Configuration encryption

	Android	Windows
How to turn on	Turn on App lock	Settings → Encryption → Encrypt…
Password	Random, generated by CloudMount and protected by an Android Keystore key that needs your fingerprint, face or screen lock	Chosen by you
Format	rclone’s own encrypted config format	rclone’s own encrypted config format
Unlocking	Your fingerprint, face or screen lock; lasts about 10 minutes	Remembered for your Windows account with DPAPI (on by default), or typed each time CloudMount starts

Both use rclone’s standard config encryption, so an encrypted rclone.conf can be opened by rclone with the password. On Android, though, the password is random and stays in the phone’s Keystore; to take your drives elsewhere, use Export, which always writes a plain rclone.conf.

Caution

On Android, removing every fingerprint, face and screen lock from the phone can make an encrypted configuration unrecoverable; you would need to import your drives again. On Windows, if you forget your password, import a plain rclone.conf to start over.

System backup

On Android, System backup (on by default) lets Android include your rclone.conf in its encrypted backup and device-to-device transfer, so a new phone gets your drives. Nothing else from CloudMount is backed up. With App lock on, the configuration is encrypted with a key that can’t leave the phone, so it isn’t backed up at all. Use Move to another device or Export instead.

CloudMount for Windows doesn’t back up its configuration. Export it if you want a copy.

App lock

Android only. App lock protects CloudMount with your fingerprint, face or screen lock:

• The app locks after a minute in the background.
• Your drives’ configuration is encrypted, so other apps reaching your drives through the Files app need it unlocked as well. An unlock lasts about ten minutes; after that, the Files app shows a button to authenticate, and files open in other apps stop working until you do.
• Widgets hide your files, and automation commands are ignored, while locked.

App lock needs a strong biometric or a screen lock to be set up on the phone.

Encrypted drives

To keep your files themselves unreadable by your storage provider, use a vault or an encrypted drive. Configuration encryption only protects the settings on your device.

Network security

CloudMount checks TLS certificates by default; some backends, such as FTP, have an option to turn that off. SFTP drives check the server’s host key only if you give them a known_hosts_file or known_hosts. On Android, CloudMount trusts the system’s certificate authorities and ones you’ve installed yourself, such as a home server’s, and respects authorities you’ve disabled in Android’s settings.

Usage and crash data

CloudMount sends anonymous usage statistics and crash reports to help fix bugs, unless you turn it off with Share usage and crash data in Settings (and, on Windows, in the first-run setup). It’s on by default.

	Android	Windows
Usage statistics	Google Firebase Analytics	Google Analytics, EU endpoint
Crash reports	Firebase Crashlytics	Our own crash reporting server

What’s sent is events such as drive added or paywall shown, with details like the backend type, error categories and screen names, the number of drives, your plan, and device, OS and app versions; on Windows also the country and display language from Windows’ settings. It never includes your files, file names, paths, drive names, server addresses, usernames or passwords. Turning it off stops sending immediately; on Windows, reports waiting to be sent are deleted.