Everything you need to know.

ShieldFive is cloud storage that encrypts your files on your device before they upload. Store files, share them with links that expire, and collect documents from clients who don’t need an account. Start with 10 GB free.

Creating an account is quick and free. Click "Sign Up" in the top navigation, enter your email address and a strong master password, then verify your email. Your master password is stretched with Argon2id to derive your vault key — it unlocks the single vault that every file in your account lives in. At signup you also receive a one-time recovery key; save it before continuing. That recovery key is the only fallback if you ever forget the master password.

Choose Upload and select a file. The client encrypts it with a per-file key wrapped by your vault key, then uploads ciphertext. Unlocking the vault enables local encryption and decryption; no separate password is needed for each file.

Select the file in your dashboard and click "Share." You can optionally set a share password (separate from your master password — it is a per-link secret used to derive the recipient's decryption capability), an expiration date, and a download cap. Anyone with the link, plus the share password if you set one, can decrypt and download the file — no account needed. You stay in control of the limits.

Keep your recovery key separately. It restores the existing vault when you reset a forgotten password. A password reset without the required key does not restore access to existing encrypted files.

Yes. You can begin on the Free plan with no credit card, then upgrade anytime without creating a new account. Your encrypted files stay in the same workspace and your existing links continue to work based on your plan's limits.

Two things keep you in: your master password and your recovery key. Store the recovery key offline — printed somewhere safe, in a password manager you control, or on a hardware token. The signup flow shows the recovery key exactly once and asks you to acknowledge that you have saved it before continuing. If you ever lose the master password, the recovery key is the only way back in.

Geolock is a server-side access check on the visitor's network location. When a link has a country allowlist, requests from outside those countries are blocked before the encrypted file is served. It is an access control, not a property of the encryption — someone routing through an allowed country (for example over a VPN) can still reach the link, so pair it with a share password and expiry rather than relying on it alone.

If the sender geofenced a link, only allowed country codes can access it. Ask the sender to add your country to the allowlist or disable geofencing for that link.

Any file type — documents, images, videos, archives, anything. The Free plan includes 10 GB of encrypted storage; paid plans scale up to 5 TB, and that allowance is the practical limit on what you can keep. Large files upload in parts, so a single file can be up to about 48 GB, limited by your plan’s storage. Very large files are best uploaded from a computer on a stable connection, with the browser tab kept open while the file is encrypted and transferred.

All encrypted files are stored in our centrally located EU data center. Regardless of where you or your recipients are located, your files remain encrypted at rest, and all decryption happens on your device. We store only ciphertext and never hold your keys, and by choosing a European data center, we keep your data under EU jurisdiction with robust security controls.

TOTP-based 2FA is available on every account. Open Settings → Security and scan the QR code with any authenticator app. Pair it with a long master password, a recovery key kept offline, and signing out on shared devices.

When you delete an encrypted file it moves to Trash, where it stays recoverable and still counts against your storage. Emptying Trash is what removes the ciphertext from our servers and frees the space, and it happens when you ask for it rather than on a timer — so if your used space has not dropped, empty Trash from the files view.

File contents are uploaded encrypted. We do not use file contents for AI training. Read Security for the authentication and client-code trust boundary.

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