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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

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.
      - hyperdimension 9y ago
        I see your point, but > as long as you need to while you look for a job Google never added this condition.
    - dawnerd 9y ago
      Mainly because they’re taking advantage of google not enforcing the 1tb cap on single accounts.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
How exactly does encryption prevent them from deleting the data?
- ilovecars2 9y ago
  It doesn’t, but why would they delete it? Google don’t have a policy to delete data they can’t read, as far as I know anyway.
  - sempron64 9y ago
    They can easily change policy in a ToS update you probably won't bother reading.
    - ilovecars2 9y ago
      Sure, but what heuristic are Google going to use to detect encrypted files? What if that heuristic matches files which aren’t encrypted and starts deleting those? We’d start to see cases of “Google deleted all of my RAW photos”, or whatever special binary format Google haven’t coded for.
      - sempron64 9y ago
        Clearly they have a heuristic for identifying pornographic videos that they have enough confidence in to use on what very well might be irreplaceable footage that is not pornographic and/or does not violate ToS. I can assume that they can find something similar to identify encrypted content, perhaps simply by identifying files of unknown format with high entropy. Short of steganography, which is inefficient, I don't think you can prevent Google from knowing you're storing encrypted files.

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.
    - hyperdimension 9y ago
      I see your point, but > as long as you need to while you look for a job Google never added this condition.
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    Mainly because they’re taking advantage of google not enforcing the 1tb cap on single accounts.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago

How exactly does encryption prevent them from deleting the data?

ilovecars2 9y ago
It doesn’t, but why would they delete it? Google don’t have a policy to delete data they can’t read, as far as I know anyway.
- sempron64 9y ago
  They can easily change policy in a ToS update you probably won't bother reading.
  - ilovecars2 9y ago
    Sure, but what heuristic are Google going to use to detect encrypted files? What if that heuristic matches files which aren’t encrypted and starts deleting those? We’d start to see cases of “Google deleted all of my RAW photos”, or whatever special binary format Google haven’t coded for.
    - sempron64 9y ago
      Clearly they have a heuristic for identifying pornographic videos that they have enough confidence in to use on what very well might be irreplaceable footage that is not pornographic and/or does not violate ToS. I can assume that they can find something similar to identify encrypted content, perhaps simply by identifying files of unknown format with high entropy. Short of steganography, which is inefficient, I don't think you can prevent Google from knowing you're storing encrypted files.