NordVPN recently announced a new product in their pipeline: NordLocker.
Currently you can only sign up to their early access program by sharing your email address. They will send out a batch of invites — presumably journalists and reviewers first.
What is NordLocker?
In simple words, NordLocker appears to be a file encryption program.
But perhaps that’s selling the product short, because NordVPN boasts plenty of more features.
Right away we can see that NordLocker is for not only putting password protection on a folder, but they also hint that it’s meant for encrypting all kinds of files along with managing login credentials. Perhaps it integrates well with NordPass.
The types of files aren’t defined just yet, but from the website copy alone, we do not believe there is a file type restriction.
Not only do they encrypt your local files, but NordLocker also encrypts files on cloud storage as well.
We can deduce that NordLocker aims to be involved in every step of file storage and sharing – an add-on service one would use to maximize security.
In addition, NordLocker seems to have a “share” option – perhaps they are building their own cloud storage service?
We don’t see this happening in the near future, but it definitely opens up possibilities. The share option probably just integrates with other cloud storage platforms like Google Drive or Dropbox.
In sum, NordLocker aims to be:
- A complete file encrypting program
- A password manager
- Possibly a cloud storage service
- Intermediary file encryption between all points.*
*An intermediary file encryption is possibly the most ambitious goal that NordLocker has. They basically want to be involved in every step of file management and sharing.
One usecase we can see this happening is something like this:
- You have sensitive files to share. Whether they’re legal documents or personal photos/videos or a password file.
- You encrypt all the files with NordLocker. The program applies zero-knowledge AES-256 encryption to keep your files safe.
- You upload your files on a cloud storage platform (perhaps NordLocker itself in the future).
- You share your file with a friend, family member or colleague.
- The receiving party uses NordLocker to decrypt the files you’ve encrypted.
In the case where someone got a hold of your encrypted files, they’d have no way to decrypt the files.
For those who are unfamiliar with file encryption, think of it as zipping up your files and unzipping (.zip, .rar files). There’s just the added benefit of applying encryption on your files.
NordLocker Policy
What we know so far:
- There is no Terms of Service yet (the program is not out for public).
- They do track website visitors and use cookies (one staying for up to 2 years).
- They do not guarantee the security of any data.
- They log information you’ve shared (like email address) as well as keeping an access log (e.g. your IP address, operating system, browser information).
The Privacy Policy, as it stands at the moment, is quite bare bones.
NordLocker Invite
Want to be one of the first to try out NordLocker?
Simply head to NordLocker.com and subscribe to their mailing list on the front page. You will then be put on a waiting list.
We have no information as to how they will manage invites nor the launch date.
We believe it will be in the latter half of 2019 for macOS and Windows.
Leave a Reply