We are pleased to be offering the first complete online back up, storage, access, and sharing solution,” said Ethan R. Oberman, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of SpiderOak. “SpiderOak’s approach differentiates itself in two crucial ways. First, we invoke a new, innovative, and vastly more secure approach to online privacy whereby we never store a user’s password or encryption keys. And second, we solve the intricate problem of storing cross platform data in a central location and making that data universally accessible to the user.”

SpiderOak offers two gigabytes of free online storage for any type of document, photo, song, movie or other digital media. Additional online storage is available for a monthly fee. Designed as a central storage repository, users may install SpiderOak on any number of computers (work, home, laptop) and access all of their files from any computer within their SpiderOak Network or any computer with an Internet connection. Back ups occur automatically and continuously whenever changes or additions are made. Further, historical versions of every file are preserved so a user can recover a file from any point in time by date-stamp.

Any file that SpiderOak has backed up can be included in a ‘ShareRoom’. As an example, a ShareRoom may contain photos of a most recent family vacation, the latest interior designs with a client, or tax records with an accountant – each on a secure and password protected basis. Additionally, changes or edits to any of the folders or documents included in a ShareRoom are automatically uploaded and available without having to ‘re-upload’ or ‘re-transfer’.

At the core of SpiderOak is privacy. “We took the unprecedented approach of using strong encryption and never storing users’ passwords or the plaintext of their encryption keys,” said SpiderOak’s experienced co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Alan Fairless. Mr. Fairless has led a team of developers for nearly two years to create this pioneering storage technology. He continued, “This means that no one can ever know what data a user is storing including the SpiderOak staff. We do allow our users to create a password hint which can be easily retrieved but this is the only recovery mechanism.” Mr. Fairless concluded, “All this was necessary to create a true zero-knowledge environment.”

The first two gigabytes of storage are free. All SpiderOak features including back up, historical versioning, adding multiple computers, and sharing are included at no extra charge. Should a user wish to back up more than 2 gigabytes, the cost is $10 per month up to 20 gigabytes and $5 for each additional 10 gigabyte increment thereafter. Future versions of the SpiderOak system will be compatible with mobile phones, Blackberrys, and PDAs.