6 ms·

I’m 12 / 15 GB on the free plan and considering upgrading to paid. If Google is now “intelligently” flagging content, I want to store my personal content elsewh

by tl 9y ago

I’m 12 / 15 GB on the free plan and considering upgrading to paid. If Google is now “intelligently” flagging content, I want to store my personal content elsewhere, regardless of its nature. Who’s not being stupid here? Apple? Should I go back to my Synology?

BadassFractal 9y ago
SpiderOak's plans are pretty cheap. Also you could use S3+Glacier for storing just about anything. I would be surprised if AWS scanned your files for "inappropriate" content.
- secabeen 9y ago
  Yeah, probably. The AUP for Amazon (including S3) has this restriction: >Offensive Content. Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable, including content that constitutes child pornography, relates to bestiality, or depicts non-consensual sex acts. So, most pornography should be okay.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Obscene is always problematic, as it’s measured against a “community standard”. What’s ok in San Francisco may not be in Mobile.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - fulafel 9y ago
    "otherwise objectionable" is a catch-all.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > So, most pornography should be okay. Most pornography could probably fall into a reasonable reading of “obscene, ..., or otherwise objectionable”.
- secfirstmd 9y ago
  Spideroak has gotten pretty lazy when it comes to it's interface etc. A number of people I work with have no switched to Tresorit, which has much more features. https://tresorit.com https://tresorit.com
  - factsaresacred 9y ago
    Wut? They only recently released a new UI. But nice job shoe-horning your friend's website into the convo.
    - ionised 9y ago
      Tresorit has been around a while, and was the nominated service to migrate to once Wuala shut down. I used SpiderOak for a while and though it started off with promise, it just isn't up to scratch compared to other services. Plus its mobile application is horrendous.
  - ta76567656 9y ago
    tresorit requires typing your password into a webpage to update account info (including your payment method, so its unavoidable) its encrypted in javascript, but some security experts frown on javascript crypto: https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-events/blog/2011/august/javascript-cryptography-considered-harmful/ https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-events/b...
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  > I would be surprised if AWS scanned your files for "inappropriate" content. Why would you be surprised? I'd go under the assumption that anything you give to them could trivially be scanned.
mikhailt 9y ago
Encrypt your data before you upload to any storage. Do not upload anything in clear view and no one can flag your stuff.
- taurath 9y ago
  No one should be able to access anything in someone’s private cloud without a warrant full stop. The fact they can tag anything is a problem.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Well it's not really your private cloud unless you are running it. It's Google's cloud, and they are letting you use it under their terms.
    - jachee 9y ago
      Yup. "'Cloud' is just shorthand for 'someone else's computers'."
    - zeth___ 9y ago
      It's not really a private could period. You don't even own the hardware that you buy. All you do is reduce the attack surface the further down the stack you go.
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      Exactly why you should never trust cloud storage.
  - phkahler 9y ago
    Google's ToS has always indicated that they are free to rummage through your stuff kept on their systems. I still prefer them because they don't AFAIK share the data with outsiders. Sure, they'll use it for targeted advertising, but they do the targeting themselves with the data.
- mercer 9y ago
  I'm on a mac. Is there an easy way to encrypt my data before it's uploaded? Would an encrypted image, permanently 'open' on my system suffice?
ilovecars2 9y ago
I was thinking about treating Google Drive as a dumb storage service and storing AES-256 files on it. It can’t figure out what’s in the files so it can’t delete it nor can Google read the files to serve targeted ads.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    With a lot of people absusing unlimited drive accounts to host their Plex collections I’m surprise it’s lasted this long. Those people are going to ruin it for the rest of us.
    - Slansitartop 9y ago
      > With a lot of people absusing unlimited drive accounts to host their Plex collections I’m surprise it’s lasted this long. Those people are going to ruin it for the rest of us. How is it "abuse" to take them up on their "unlimited" offer? It's not very unlimited if it's somehow wrong for you to store too much stuff one it.
      - paulcole 9y ago
        Imagine you’re moving to my town. I say “you’re welcome to stay with me as long as you need to while you look for a job.” 2 years later, you’re still unemployed and sleeping on my couch. I kick you out. Am I the asshole or are you?
        Slansitartop 9y ago
        Your example is an example of taking advantage of personal hospitality, the Google drive users are taking advantage of an advertised product offering. Those are totally different things. No one's an asshole for using a product they were offered to the fullest. If Google didn't want them to do that, they shouldn't have offered an "unlimited" product in the first place.
secfirstmd 9y ago
Also you can encrypt your stuff on your device before you put it into Google, Dropbox etc cloud. For example with this open source tool, Cryptomator. https://cryptomator.org https://cryptomator.org
- pasbesoin 9y ago
  At a brief first look, this is very interesting. Why haven't we heard more about it? (Somewhat rhetorical, as in, hey, take a look.)
- Avamander 9y ago
  Or with something like CryFS.
Sir_Substance 9y ago
>Should I go back to my Synology? If you've got one lying around, absolutely you should choose to control your own data.
jlarocco 9y ago
IMO, this will always be a problem with "cloud" services now. No company is going to host illegal content if it makes them liable, and they can't use the "we can't check everything" excuse anymore because the technology now exists to check everything. Implementing it, or buying it from somebody, will just be a cost of doing business for hosting companies.
- reificator 9y ago
  > the technology now exists to check everything But we're certainly not at the point where it's even approaching the accuracy of a human being. False positives and false negatives abound. When that means the service I pay for as a backup starts deleting my innocent content because it thought it was porn, that's when I leave that tool and never come back.
  - jlarocco 9y ago
    > But we're certainly not at the point where it's even approaching the accuracy of a human being. You say that like it's an end of the world show stopping bug. There's no reason a company can't have a process for handling those mistakes. > False positives and false negatives abound. When that means the service I pay for as a backup starts deleting my innocent content because it thought it was porn, that's when I leave that tool and never come back. And go where? If everybody has to filter content then they'll all have those issues.
- ISL 9y ago
  "We can't check everything" if it is encrypted client-side.
  - jlarocco 9y ago
    Yeah, that's the only solution that will work.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Porn isn't illegal, though. This porn didn't even seem to be infringing on copyright, which is probably more than you can say for a lot of content stored on Google Drive. Google avoiding making itself an accomplice to illegal activities would be far easier to swallow than Google appointing itself the arbiter of some puritanical ideas of morality.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
C14L 9y ago
Don't forget to encrypt before uploading. Best to only sync `encfs` directories. You never know what will become "illegal" or "undesirable" content in the future.
kps 9y ago
Buy some spinning rust.
ohiovr 9y ago
Nextcloud isn't a terrible option if you can roll your own server. I think there are third party providers for nextcloud. I use yunohost to serve my nextcloud instance. Wasn't too hard to do.
ksec 9y ago
Is there any NAS, that stores its backup through distributed function in similar NAS? Like I buy 6TB NAS, 2TB will be for myself, the other 4TB is for everyone else, where every files to be spilt in many pieces, encrypted and stored multiple copies evenly in others NAS.
rsync 9y ago
"Who’s not being stupid here? Apple? Should I go back to my Synology?" We (rsync.net) exist. You may find the 'borg' tool, which we support on the server side, to be interesting: https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/ There is a longstanding "HN discount". Email for details.

by tl 9y ago

BadassFractal 9y ago

SpiderOak's plans are pretty cheap. Also you could use S3+Glacier for storing just about anything. I would be surprised if AWS scanned your files for "inappropriate" content.

secabeen 9y ago
Yeah, probably. The AUP for Amazon (including S3) has this restriction: >Offensive Content. Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable, including content that constitutes child pornography, relates to bestiality, or depicts non-consensual sex acts. So, most pornography should be okay.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Obscene is always problematic, as it’s measured against a “community standard”. What’s ok in San Francisco may not be in Mobile.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- fulafel 9y ago
  "otherwise objectionable" is a catch-all.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > So, most pornography should be okay. Most pornography could probably fall into a reasonable reading of “obscene, ..., or otherwise objectionable”.
secfirstmd 9y ago
Spideroak has gotten pretty lazy when it comes to it's interface etc. A number of people I work with have no switched to Tresorit, which has much more features. https://tresorit.com https://tresorit.com
- factsaresacred 9y ago
  Wut? They only recently released a new UI. But nice job shoe-horning your friend's website into the convo.
  - ionised 9y ago
    Tresorit has been around a while, and was the nominated service to migrate to once Wuala shut down. I used SpiderOak for a while and though it started off with promise, it just isn't up to scratch compared to other services. Plus its mobile application is horrendous.
- ta76567656 9y ago
  tresorit requires typing your password into a webpage to update account info (including your payment method, so its unavoidable) its encrypted in javascript, but some security experts frown on javascript crypto: https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-events/blog/2011/august/javascript-cryptography-considered-harmful/ https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-events/b...
CaptSpify 9y ago
> I would be surprised if AWS scanned your files for "inappropriate" content. Why would you be surprised? I'd go under the assumption that anything you give to them could trivially be scanned.

mikhailt 9y ago

Encrypt your data before you upload to any storage. Do not upload anything in clear view and no one can flag your stuff.

taurath 9y ago
No one should be able to access anything in someone’s private cloud without a warrant full stop. The fact they can tag anything is a problem.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Well it's not really your private cloud unless you are running it. It's Google's cloud, and they are letting you use it under their terms.
  - jachee 9y ago
    Yup. "'Cloud' is just shorthand for 'someone else's computers'."
  - zeth___ 9y ago
    It's not really a private could period. You don't even own the hardware that you buy. All you do is reduce the attack surface the further down the stack you go.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    Exactly why you should never trust cloud storage.
- phkahler 9y ago
  Google's ToS has always indicated that they are free to rummage through your stuff kept on their systems. I still prefer them because they don't AFAIK share the data with outsiders. Sure, they'll use it for targeted advertising, but they do the targeting themselves with the data.
mercer 9y ago
I'm on a mac. Is there an easy way to encrypt my data before it's uploaded? Would an encrypted image, permanently 'open' on my system suffice?

ilovecars2 9y ago

I was thinking about treating Google Drive as a dumb storage service and storing AES-256 files on it. It can’t figure out what’s in the files so it can’t delete it nor can Google read the files to serve targeted ads.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
- dawnerd 9y ago
  With a lot of people absusing unlimited drive accounts to host their Plex collections I’m surprise it’s lasted this long. Those people are going to ruin it for the rest of us.
  - Slansitartop 9y ago
    > With a lot of people absusing unlimited drive accounts to host their Plex collections I’m surprise it’s lasted this long. Those people are going to ruin it for the rest of us. How is it "abuse" to take them up on their "unlimited" offer? It's not very unlimited if it's somehow wrong for you to store too much stuff one it.
    - paulcole 9y ago
      Imagine you’re moving to my town. I say “you’re welcome to stay with me as long as you need to while you look for a job.” 2 years later, you’re still unemployed and sleeping on my couch. I kick you out. Am I the asshole or are you?
      - Slansitartop 9y ago
        Your example is an example of taking advantage of personal hospitality, the Google drive users are taking advantage of an advertised product offering. Those are totally different things. No one's an asshole for using a product they were offered to the fullest. If Google didn't want them to do that, they shouldn't have offered an "unlimited" product in the first place.

secfirstmd 9y ago

Also you can encrypt your stuff on your device before you put it into Google, Dropbox etc cloud. For example with this open source tool, Cryptomator. https://cryptomator.org https://cryptomator.org

pasbesoin 9y ago
At a brief first look, this is very interesting. Why haven't we heard more about it? (Somewhat rhetorical, as in, hey, take a look.)
Avamander 9y ago
Or with something like CryFS.

Sir_Substance 9y ago

>Should I go back to my Synology? If you've got one lying around, absolutely you should choose to control your own data.

jlarocco 9y ago

IMO, this will always be a problem with "cloud" services now. No company is going to host illegal content if it makes them liable, and they can't use the "we can't check everything" excuse anymore because the technology now exists to check everything. Implementing it, or buying it from somebody, will just be a cost of doing business for hosting companies.

reificator 9y ago
> the technology now exists to check everything But we're certainly not at the point where it's even approaching the accuracy of a human being. False positives and false negatives abound. When that means the service I pay for as a backup starts deleting my innocent content because it thought it was porn, that's when I leave that tool and never come back.
- jlarocco 9y ago
  > But we're certainly not at the point where it's even approaching the accuracy of a human being. You say that like it's an end of the world show stopping bug. There's no reason a company can't have a process for handling those mistakes. > False positives and false negatives abound. When that means the service I pay for as a backup starts deleting my innocent content because it thought it was porn, that's when I leave that tool and never come back. And go where? If everybody has to filter content then they'll all have those issues.
ISL 9y ago
"We can't check everything" if it is encrypted client-side.
- jlarocco 9y ago
  Yeah, that's the only solution that will work.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
Porn isn't illegal, though. This porn didn't even seem to be infringing on copyright, which is probably more than you can say for a lot of content stored on Google Drive. Google avoiding making itself an accomplice to illegal activities would be far easier to swallow than Google appointing itself the arbiter of some puritanical ideas of morality.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

C14L 9y ago

Don't forget to encrypt before uploading. Best to only sync `encfs` directories. You never know what will become "illegal" or "undesirable" content in the future.

kps 9y ago

Buy some spinning rust.

ohiovr 9y ago

Nextcloud isn't a terrible option if you can roll your own server. I think there are third party providers for nextcloud. I use yunohost to serve my nextcloud instance. Wasn't too hard to do.

ksec 9y ago

Is there any NAS, that stores its backup through distributed function in similar NAS? Like I buy 6TB NAS, 2TB will be for myself, the other 4TB is for everyone else, where every files to be spilt in many pieces, encrypted and stored multiple copies evenly in others NAS.

rsync 9y ago

"Who’s not being stupid here? Apple? Should I go back to my Synology?" We (rsync.net) exist. You may find the 'borg' tool, which we support on the server side, to be interesting: https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/ There is a longstanding "HN discount". Email for details.