May·Secret vs. Google Drive, Dropbox, pCloud: which cloud really protects your files?

Nearly every consumer cloud storage service now advertises data encryption. The real difference comes down to one question: who holds the decryption key?

Google Drive and Dropbox: encryption at rest, key held by the provider

Google Drive and Dropbox encrypt files on their servers (encryption at rest, AES-256), and also encrypt transfers (TLS). But in both cases, the provider holds the decryption keys: it can technically access your files' content, for indexing, previews, full-text search, or in response to a legal request. This is not end-to-end encryption.

pCloud: E2E encryption exists, but as a paid add-on

pCloud offers a "pCloud Encryption" add-on with client-side encryption, closer to a zero-knowledge architecture. But this option is a paid extra module, separate from the standard storage subscription, and only covers a dedicated folder rather than the whole account.

May·Secret: zero-knowledge by default, on every plan

Service	Client-side (E2E) encryption	Hosting	Provider access to content
Google Drive	No (at rest only)	United States / global	Possible
Dropbox	No (at rest only)	United States	Possible
pCloud	Paid add-on, dedicated folder	Luxembourg / United States	Possible outside the encrypted folder
May·Secret	Yes, by default, every file	France	Not possible (zero-knowledge)

At May·Secret, end-to-end encryption isn't an option: it's the default architecture, including on the free plan. The full technical detail (XChaCha20-Poly1305, Argon2id, Curve25519) is documented on our security page.