“One of the impetuses behind Hive,” SpiderOak CEO Ethan Oberman told PCWorld “was providing people with an easy way to approach privacy in a way they’ve already understood with cloud-storage services.” The means applying SpiderOak’s zero-knowledge capabilities to the drag-and-drop functionality of services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive.

Hive may sound like every other sync service out there, and in some ways it is, but the difference with SpiderOak Hive is the company’s commitment to zero-knowledge encryption for your data and password. How SpiderOak Hive shows up in Windows Explorer

Starting Tuesday, however, when new users download SpiderOak, they will get 5GB of free online storage for a limited time instead of the company’s usual 2GB allotment. Hive has already been available for about a week. As part of the SpiderOak Hive roll out, the company has a new Android app coming your way next week-we’ve got a sneak peek at the latest beta version.

As with previous versions of SpiderOak, you can also access your files on mobile devices.

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