Hey thanks for the question! The issue wasn't that it was impossible to capture the information securely, it was that there was a decent amount of user friction to do so. I envisioned forms to be the simplest way to capture structured data and built security around it.
By contrast, NextCloud's drop would entail emailing the user a set of attributes, asking them to create a document locally, then uploading. Adding to that not every business would know how to, or want to go through the process of setting up their own web server for this use case.
My thinking is that this private forms approach would be a better default compared to email or text, which is how many businesses are handling this data today.
While working on my company I was having to reach out to contractors and content creators for their SSN, address, and bank info. Since none of them used Signal or PGP email, and we weren't comfortable adding a form into our existing product to store sensitive data, there was always some back and forth on trying to get that data avoiding email or text.
I was surprised that I couldn't find a solution to this in the wild, so I put VaultForm together to solve that problem for me. Then took it a little further to make it client-side encrypted so the server can't know anything important. This way anyone filling out a form can be assured their private information is safely transmitted, can't be viewed or leaked by the service, and don't need to sign up for a new service to do so.
Is there a specific reason why you have your link structured that way? I'm surprised to see that many tags as subfolders to the content, not sure I've come across that structure before. Just curious!
Right?! Unbounded and Darker Grotesque, both are open source from Google fonts(fonts.google.com). My co-founder picked it because he said the negative space in the C looked like the spoons he uses every morning to eat his cereal ha.
Thanks! Great question, and I should have been more clear in my terminology. We're more like a site builder + hosting provider than a general platform. The difference is between us hosting them directly i.e. Squarespace, and their presence on a platform where they are in a larger pool of creators and their branding is secondary i.e. Patreon/YouTube.
The key is that even on our lowest tier there is no cross site discovery, the only presence of our branding is in the footer, and their membership list is exportable at any time. As a result the creators feel and communicate that this is entirely "their" site, if that makes sense.
We made Cereal to help content creators find more independence in running their own content business, by centralizing their content on their own site and offering subscription/monetization.
It's been great, creators are able to monetize their customers without being on a 3rd party platform with ridiculous fees, or base their entire income on ads.
By contrast, NextCloud's drop would entail emailing the user a set of attributes, asking them to create a document locally, then uploading. Adding to that not every business would know how to, or want to go through the process of setting up their own web server for this use case.
My thinking is that this private forms approach would be a better default compared to email or text, which is how many businesses are handling this data today.