A network with a public/untrusted device

Hi,

In my office there are a couple of desktops and laptops which are more or less of public use. I plan to use Syncthing to sync a certain folders among all of these devices.

I would also like this folder to be synced to my personal device, but I’m afraid that this will somehow expose my personal device to anyone who is using any of these office computers.

I don’t suspect anyone will attempt to do anything evil, but I am still concerned about privacy and security (for example, it is possible that the people in the office will infect the shared folder with some Windows malware or virus or whatever).

Is it possible to do something like this without risking my personal device?

Thanks!

It’s not clear from your description if you want bidirectional sync. If not, you can send your personal folder to send only.

If you do want to have bidirectional sync then the conditions are mutually exclusive, you want to receive files, but want to make sure it’s not malware.

Syncthing is not an antivirus, it will not protect you from malware.

Thank you for your reply. I do want a bidirectional sync, and it makes sense it will not protect me against virus/malware. But what about privacy? Will users of the public devices be able to see private information about my devices, which might put my personal device at risk?

What sort of private information are we talking about?

It will see your ip address, version of syncthing, potentially parts of device id of other devices you share those folders with.

I see, that doesn’t seem to be too harmful. Thanks!

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