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by tzs 1018 days ago
That makes me happy, because 12 years ago here on HN I posted a comment [1] outlining how a Dropbox-like service could be implemented that stored user files encrypted, with the service not having the keys, yet allow for full deduplication when different users were storing the same file, while still supporting the normal Dropbox sharing features.

The file encryption part was based on using a hash of the file as the key.

It's always nice to later find out that one's quick amateur idea turns out to be an independent rediscovery of something legit. Now that I've learned it is called "convergent encryption" Googling tells me it it goes back to 1995 and a Stac patent.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2461713