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Theoretically what you are describing is Apple iCloud business model. But some might say that because it's not open source you can't trust them. Personally I

by Twisell 10y ago

Theoretically what you are describing is Apple iCloud business model. But some might say that because it's not open source you can't trust them. Personally I trust the money I give them, they promised me privacy, I pay monthly, if I am ever betrayed I'll leave apple ecosystem forever and they will get less money. So they basically have no incentives to lie to me. Yes it's all based on trust but this always come to that at some point.

balladeer 10y ago
> But some might say that because it's not open source you can't trust them. And should it not be the case? Theoretically. As for the reasoning why they do not have incentive to lie to you goes same for anyone and pretty much anything where a wrongdoing takes place that shouldn't have happened in the first place. It could be anything. If we go for examples it will be stretching it just too far. The middle ground can be - an easy backup/sync/mail service that does the heavy lifting - the transport work and we encrypt decrypt on the client side. For example, we can't have a transportation company if all we have to do is send a few packets every month across the company or globe. But we can have an unbreakable lock/safe/package in which package the stuff and the receiver is the only person how to open the stuff. I have never really been good at analogies but I hope you get the drift. If only they could write an easy app that uses the service APIs and code for that app is open source and all it does is encryption decryption (generally speaking) on the client machine. Something BackBlaze and CrashPlan claim to do (they are closed source btw) and so does Tarsnap (haven't used it - too complex and pricey for my use case; and not sure if it's open source).
- cperciva 10y ago
  Tarsnap (haven't used it - too complex and pricey for my use case; and not sure if it's open source). FWIW, Tarsnap is not under an open source license, but you do get the client source code (and you're encouraged to audit it before compiling).
bigbugbag 10y ago
You may have overlooked that apple is a hardware company, services they offer are complementary to the hardware they sell. Their incentives follows what sells more hardware. If forfeiting icloud privacy gives them access to a billion new hardware customers (hello China!) as iphone sales are dwindling, do you really believe they will stick behind icloud privacy ? The point being that they may have more incentive to break their privacy promises than you think. But still, at the moment apple being a hugely succesful hardware company gives it less incentives than say an advertising network (hello google), a "give us all your data and we'll make it available online for you, also ads" (hello facebook Inc.) as their revenue depends mostly on hardware not on ads or software licencing or investor story time. This may change when profits and sales go down, we have already witnessed other hardware vendors making moves such as lowering item sale price with a strategy to recoup the loss with exploiting/reselling user data later (hello samsung).

by Twisell 10y ago

balladeer 10y ago

> But some might say that because it's not open source you can't trust them. And should it not be the case? Theoretically. As for the reasoning why they do not have incentive to lie to you goes same for anyone and pretty much anything where a wrongdoing takes place that shouldn't have happened in the first place. It could be anything. If we go for examples it will be stretching it just too far. The middle ground can be - an easy backup/sync/mail service that does the heavy lifting - the transport work and we encrypt decrypt on the client side. For example, we can't have a transportation company if all we have to do is send a few packets every month across the company or globe. But we can have an unbreakable lock/safe/package in which package the stuff and the receiver is the only person how to open the stuff. I have never really been good at analogies but I hope you get the drift. If only they could write an easy app that uses the service APIs and code for that app is open source and all it does is encryption decryption (generally speaking) on the client machine. Something BackBlaze and CrashPlan claim to do (they are closed source btw) and so does Tarsnap (haven't used it - too complex and pricey for my use case; and not sure if it's open source).

cperciva 10y ago
Tarsnap (haven't used it - too complex and pricey for my use case; and not sure if it's open source). FWIW, Tarsnap is not under an open source license, but you do get the client source code (and you're encouraged to audit it before compiling).

bigbugbag 10y ago

You may have overlooked that apple is a hardware company, services they offer are complementary to the hardware they sell. Their incentives follows what sells more hardware. If forfeiting icloud privacy gives them access to a billion new hardware customers (hello China!) as iphone sales are dwindling, do you really believe they will stick behind icloud privacy ? The point being that they may have more incentive to break their privacy promises than you think. But still, at the moment apple being a hugely succesful hardware company gives it less incentives than say an advertising network (hello google), a "give us all your data and we'll make it available online for you, also ads" (hello facebook Inc.) as their revenue depends mostly on hardware not on ads or software licencing or investor story time. This may change when profits and sales go down, we have already witnessed other hardware vendors making moves such as lowering item sale price with a strategy to recoup the loss with exploiting/reselling user data later (hello samsung).