Backups on unknown machines

If you rent a root server, there might be some ftp space to do backups included. But where are those backups stored? You never know if this server is ‘open to public’. What now?

Encryption is the key! In other words, if you sign and encrypt your files, you can be sure that nobody messed around with it. Heise once wrote a wrapper for duplicity for doing that job. The script can be found here:

http://www.heise.de/security/artikel/78816