Out in the Open: The Tiny Box That Lets You Take Your Data Back From Google

 

The National Security Agency is scanning your email. Google and Facebook are hoarding your personal data. And online advertisers are selling your shopping habits to the highest bidder.

Today, more than ever, people are thinking about how to opt out of this madness without quitting the internet entirely. The obvious answer is to host your own web apps on your own computer server. And thanks to the burgeoning Indie Web Movement, there’s no shortage of open source alternatives to popular services like Google Calendar, Facebook’s photo albums, or Dropbox’s file sharing. The problem is that setting up and managing your own server is a pain in the neck–at least for the average consumer.

For open source developer Johannes Ernst, what the world really needs is a simple device that anyone can use to take their data back from the wilds of the internet. So he designed the Indie Box, a personal web server preloaded with open source software that lets you run your own web services from your home network–and run them with relative ease. Any system administrator will tell you that setting up a server is just the first step. Maintaining it is the other big problem. Indie Box seeks to simplify both, with an option to fully automate all updates and maintenance tasks, from operating system patches to routine database migrations.

Inside the Box

Image: The Indie Box Project

You can’t buy an Indie Box yet, but you can pre-order one through the crowdfunding site Indie GoGo. A completely assembled device costs $500. That may sound like a lot, but Ernst argues that the cost is in line with other machines equipped with similar hardware. And the prices could eventually come down if Ernst is successful in raising funds for the project. Eventually, the Indie Box software platform will be available to download, and that will let people install all its tools on their own hardware.

Plus, Ernst says, other developers will be free to build their own products atop Indie Box. “It’s not supposed to be one product from one company,” he explains. “It’s supposed to be a platform for lots of people to innovate on.”

The first Indie Box will run off an Intel Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, and two 1TB hard drives that mirror each other to help protect your data. Software will include ownCloud, which offers a calendar, address book, and Dropbox-style file sharing; the photo album apps mediagoblin and Trovebox; and the e-mail client Mailpile. For now, it won’t include an e-mail server since spam filters make it so hard to run one from home.

There’s also an app store that will let you add more tools. Although all apps in the store must be open source, developers will have the option of selling them for a fee, giving them the chance to actually make money from their projects. “What we find is that users have no problem paying if they don’t have to maintain the software,” Ernst says.

Eventually, he wants Indie Box to act as a hub for devices on the Internet of Things. He personally runs many devices that send data to a server across the internet, which then notifies him of something that happened on the device sitting just a few feet away from him. “There’s something wrong with that architecture,” he says. “I’m much more comfortable with having my thermostat communicating with a computer in my house over my own Wi-Fi than going through Google.”

A Box in Every Home

But the bigger aim is to put an Indie Box in every home. Running a home web server may sound ridiculously geeky, but keep in mind that personal computers, home internet connections, and smartphones were once the exclusive province of geeks. All are now mainstream, and Ernst says many people are already interested in the idea.

“Everyone we talked to wanted to be able to take their calendar data home from Google,” Ernst says. “People don’t necessarily want Google to know they have a doctor’s appointment, or what diseases they are being treated for.”

And he isn’t the only one building ready-made servers for the masses. Freedom Box Foundation is working on a similar appliance for activists in countries where the internet is heavily censored, and the French company Cozy Cloud is teaming with European telecommunications companies to bring its personal cloud servers to consumers. Perhaps the age of the personal web server is finally here.