I use Dropbox to have online backups of my files. Dropbox already provides a good set of protection mechanisms (Two-step verification, …). If you need an additional level then Boxcryptor is worth having a look.

Unfortunately Boxcryptor is not available on Linux but it is compatible with encfs. The blog of Boxcryptor has a post describing in details how you can setup encfs on Ubuntu.

The blog post lacks some useful additional details.

Have encfs available for every user

By default only root users are allowed to use encfs. You can allow non-root users to use encfs.

Modify the /etc/fuse.conf file so that the last line “user_allow_other” does NOT have a leading hash. Save and exit. You do not need to reboot.

Add the non-priv user to the group fuse

You can then use encfs:

$ encfs /home/joeuser/encrypted_data /home/joeuser/decrypted -- -o allow_other

Sync files automatically

I sync my files via rsync from crontab. Before running the rsync I verify if the encrypted volume is mounted.

#/bin/bash

if ! mount | grep encfs >/dev/null; then
 echo "ENCFS not mounted"
else
 rsync -artvuc --delete /home/joeuser/files/ /home/joeuser/decrypted/files
fi