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I know losing a YouTube channel is horrible, especially after you dedicated so much time, effort and money - and for some people it may be a source of income as

by 101008 5y ago

I know losing a YouTube channel is horrible, especially after you dedicated so much time, effort and money - and for some people it may be a source of income as well. It is totally unfair. But my nightmare in here is that you lose access to your whole Google account and that would devastate me. Not only email access (and thus, access to every service I use because I have my Google account linked to it), but also Google Photos, with memories from the past 15 years with loved ones (even photos of my mom who passed away). And I am sure a lot of other services that I cannot remember now (by the way, imagine you are hired by a company that uses Google Cloud, you couldn't technically work for them?)

bambax 5y ago
Do not use the cloud as a storage system. Use it as a distribution system only and keep multiple copies of precious data with you, on media that you control. I use Smugmug but if they go out of business today I couldn't care less, not only do I keep copies, I also keep the structure of the galleries and could recreate them elsewhere with little trouble.
- dspillett 5y ago
  > Do not use the cloud as a storage system. Use it as a distribution system only and keep multiple copies of precious data with you, on media that you control. Also unless you are paying for it Google are not storing the full un-recompressed copies of the photo files from your device, so if you rely on them for backup what you restore when your primary copy is lost/damaged is not the full quality you originally had. I do have my stuff go up to Google but only for easy access. For backup, I rsync (currently via termux) to home and from there the data is copied elsewhere as part of my offsite/offine backups with everything else I can't reobtain easily if lost/corrupt.
cube00 5y ago
You have the power TODAY to change that. Do it before you lose access. Start with a Google Takeout and get your email out into your own domain as a starting point. Search "self hosting" for more details, even if you have no interest in running your own servers it gives you lots of good ideas to regain more control over your own data.
- 101008 5y ago
  My main fear about that is not doing it properly and my email stop working as expected. For the nature of my job (press) I send a lot of emails to people who don-t know me, asking for interviews, etc. If my email starts to fall into spam folder, my job would be impossible. Gmail gives me that and I don't have to worry about if this person received the email or not.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    It took me a couple years to transfer all important online accounts and communications to a new email, one by one. Set up an auto-redirect, change the email in all accounts when you log in, slowly. I feel free now.
  - throwaway82931 5y ago
    Maybe 1) remove everything else from Google and 2) Start paying for your Gmail account, which will hopefully make it more likely that the appeals process actually works? Gmail's service is clearly something you depend on and that is worth paying for. It's hard to know what's best in terms of risk management here. The likelihood that you will be hit is small but the consequences are potentially devastating.
    - cube00 5y ago
      I agree the likelihood is small but when you're thinking along these lines[1] I think it's time to start making a move to give yourself some piece of mind. [1] But my nightmare in here is that you lose access to your whole Google account and that would devastate me.
  - bennyp101 5y ago
    Something like Mail-in-a-box[1] is easy to setup, you can monitor the spam stuff yourself, comes with all the instructions you need to get the DNS side of setup correctly etc I've not had any issues with email not reaching people - and I'm not sure that other mailservers would put gmail any higher, especially as they are used for a lot of spam [1] https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/
thijser 5y ago
At least there's Google takeout where you can download a data dump of everything they've stored for you, so probably a good idea to do that for your precious photo memories.
- 101008 5y ago
  Yes, I am thinking in doing that, at least every X months or something like that. Thanks.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    You can schedule that from within Google account settings, and even have automatic uploads to different third party providers ( like OneDrive, Box, Dropbox).
  - nybble41 5y ago
    I download a new Takeout every six months. One thing to be aware of if you plan on storing these long-term is that their archives are not very efficient. In particular, there is no incremental backup option—each Takeout is a full copy, and there are often many duplicate files even within one download. I take two post-processing steps with each download which significantly reduce the storage space required: (1) I convert the Google Mail data from mbox format to maildir (with mb2md[0]), so that each email is a separate file which can be deduplicated, and (2) I append the new takeout data to a SquashFS[1] filesystem with xz compression. This automatically deduplicates identical files, both within the new archive and against previous archives. The end result is that I now have three ~50 GiB Takeouts stored in a single ~25 GiB SquashFS filesystem image. My (Linux-based) process also involves ratarmount, bindfs, and fuse-overlayfs. These tools are not strictly necessary but they do reduce the amount of temporary space required, since there is no need to unpack the .tgz files. Access to the resulting filesystem image is through either squashfuse or for better performance (but requiring root) a native loopback mount. [0] http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/ http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SquashFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SquashFS
obiwan14 5y ago
That's why I don't use Google and others like that for anything essential, like email or storage. My operating principle is computing has to be done locally, unless I can't help it. I use all these services for distribution, not for permanent access. Twitter suspended an account because their AI does not understand content, but I don't care. I don't use Gmail, but do have a YouTube account. If that account is suspended this minute, I wouldn't even bother. I still have my videos and can recreate them somewhere else. On a related note, let's see if HN will let this comment post, since this would be my 2nd in an hour.
zucker42 5y ago
The simple solution is never use the same google account for YouTube and Gmail/Drive.
- sneak 5y ago
  Google correlates all of the accounts that you log in to from the same devices. If you have YouTube on iOS logged in to one account and Drive on iOS logged in to a different one, Google is aware that those accounts are used by the same person. TOS-violation suspensions are likely to involve all of your accounts at once. The simple solution is to stop doing business with Google. They'll also hand all of your shit over to the CIA without a warrant even if you aren't doing anything wrong, so there's that, too.
jug 5y ago
I've thought about the same. I rely on Google too much. But "too much" is really only e-mail and cloud storage (Google Drive) for me. I only rely on cloud hosting for photos for a select few albums I intentionally want to share a link to, not as a full cloud of all my photos that I then rely on being there. I offload my phone and camera every now and then to local storage (NAS) at home, a hard drive in a safe deposit box at my bank, and then my Synology NAS runs an automated Backblaze backup which is very cost efficient for this use. So I would only really need to switch 1) my mail provider to something else, which is easier today now that I rely on "messengers" more than mail, so not many people that I need to inform. Just subscriptions and account details that I can update one at a time. 2) cloud storage to something else, and there are oceans of alternatives there, many very capable.
- reginold 5y ago
  for #1 you can take it step by step. get your own domain, name@domain.com for $10 a year. hook that address up to gmail so you can send as name@domain.com. then get comfortable with that, set it as your default reply from, tell friends, etc. then 6 months later, a year later or whenever youre comfortable you can move off gmail. only send from name@domain, and have gmail forward all your emails to that account. no one you contact will see anything different. then if you ever need to again switch in the future you're free to do so, and you're always name@domain.com.
jacob019 5y ago
That is why I have completely degoogled my life. Backup your photos ASAP! I'm using nextcloud as a google photos replacement. It's not quite as smooth as google photos but it works well enough and I control my data. The official app handles auto-upload of my photos. Yaga is a nice android client for viewing the photos on my degoogled phone. The web app works well for that too and there are even sharing features, so I can share an album or photo with friends, family, or whoever. Nextcloud has suitable replacements for notes, drive, docs, contact backup/sync, and more. It's a little bit of effort to set up but totally worth it to control my data and get privacy. Fastmail is a great paid replacement for gmail. It has calander, notes, and file storage features too. There are so many cloud storage options, really no excuse to use google drive. There are other turnkey google photo replacements as well these days, amazon and flickr come to mind. Google has nice apps but it's just not worth being their product, especially since they nerfed the free storage.
72deluxe 5y ago
I set up my own mail server following the guide here: https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/mail-server-guide/ https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/mail-server-guide/ I also referred to https://www.gmass.co/blog/smtp-server-linux/ https://www.gmass.co/blog/smtp-server-linux/ I also looked at OwnCloud, but ended up just syncing from my phone to local Mac and doing backups off that regularly. You could also rsync to other devices. A raspberry Pi with a SSD at home would work fine. If you have a VPN set up on your own network (eg. an ASUS router), you could use it to host photos/backups/music. If you home IP address is dynamic, use a free DDNS provider so you can always connect to your home site. Just make sure you get a copy of those photos sooner than later!!

by 101008 5y ago

bambax 5y ago

Do not use the cloud as a storage system. Use it as a distribution system only and keep multiple copies of precious data with you, on media that you control. I use Smugmug but if they go out of business today I couldn't care less, not only do I keep copies, I also keep the structure of the galleries and could recreate them elsewhere with little trouble.

dspillett 5y ago
> Do not use the cloud as a storage system. Use it as a distribution system only and keep multiple copies of precious data with you, on media that you control. Also unless you are paying for it Google are not storing the full un-recompressed copies of the photo files from your device, so if you rely on them for backup what you restore when your primary copy is lost/damaged is not the full quality you originally had. I do have my stuff go up to Google but only for easy access. For backup, I rsync (currently via termux) to home and from there the data is copied elsewhere as part of my offsite/offine backups with everything else I can't reobtain easily if lost/corrupt.

cube00 5y ago

You have the power TODAY to change that. Do it before you lose access. Start with a Google Takeout and get your email out into your own domain as a starting point. Search "self hosting" for more details, even if you have no interest in running your own servers it gives you lots of good ideas to regain more control over your own data.

101008 5y ago
My main fear about that is not doing it properly and my email stop working as expected. For the nature of my job (press) I send a lot of emails to people who don-t know me, asking for interviews, etc. If my email starts to fall into spam folder, my job would be impossible. Gmail gives me that and I don't have to worry about if this person received the email or not.
- fsflover 5y ago
  It took me a couple years to transfer all important online accounts and communications to a new email, one by one. Set up an auto-redirect, change the email in all accounts when you log in, slowly. I feel free now.
- throwaway82931 5y ago
  Maybe 1) remove everything else from Google and 2) Start paying for your Gmail account, which will hopefully make it more likely that the appeals process actually works? Gmail's service is clearly something you depend on and that is worth paying for. It's hard to know what's best in terms of risk management here. The likelihood that you will be hit is small but the consequences are potentially devastating.
  - cube00 5y ago
    I agree the likelihood is small but when you're thinking along these lines[1] I think it's time to start making a move to give yourself some piece of mind. [1] But my nightmare in here is that you lose access to your whole Google account and that would devastate me.
- bennyp101 5y ago
  Something like Mail-in-a-box[1] is easy to setup, you can monitor the spam stuff yourself, comes with all the instructions you need to get the DNS side of setup correctly etc I've not had any issues with email not reaching people - and I'm not sure that other mailservers would put gmail any higher, especially as they are used for a lot of spam [1] https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/

thijser 5y ago

At least there's Google takeout where you can download a data dump of everything they've stored for you, so probably a good idea to do that for your precious photo memories.

101008 5y ago
Yes, I am thinking in doing that, at least every X months or something like that. Thanks.
- sofixa 5y ago
  You can schedule that from within Google account settings, and even have automatic uploads to different third party providers ( like OneDrive, Box, Dropbox).
- nybble41 5y ago
  I download a new Takeout every six months. One thing to be aware of if you plan on storing these long-term is that their archives are not very efficient. In particular, there is no incremental backup option—each Takeout is a full copy, and there are often many duplicate files even within one download. I take two post-processing steps with each download which significantly reduce the storage space required: (1) I convert the Google Mail data from mbox format to maildir (with mb2md[0]), so that each email is a separate file which can be deduplicated, and (2) I append the new takeout data to a SquashFS[1] filesystem with xz compression. This automatically deduplicates identical files, both within the new archive and against previous archives. The end result is that I now have three ~50 GiB Takeouts stored in a single ~25 GiB SquashFS filesystem image. My (Linux-based) process also involves ratarmount, bindfs, and fuse-overlayfs. These tools are not strictly necessary but they do reduce the amount of temporary space required, since there is no need to unpack the .tgz files. Access to the resulting filesystem image is through either squashfuse or for better performance (but requiring root) a native loopback mount. [0] http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/ http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SquashFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SquashFS

obiwan14 5y ago

That's why I don't use Google and others like that for anything essential, like email or storage. My operating principle is computing has to be done locally, unless I can't help it. I use all these services for distribution, not for permanent access. Twitter suspended an account because their AI does not understand content, but I don't care. I don't use Gmail, but do have a YouTube account. If that account is suspended this minute, I wouldn't even bother. I still have my videos and can recreate them somewhere else. On a related note, let's see if HN will let this comment post, since this would be my 2nd in an hour.

zucker42 5y ago

The simple solution is never use the same google account for YouTube and Gmail/Drive.

sneak 5y ago
Google correlates all of the accounts that you log in to from the same devices. If you have YouTube on iOS logged in to one account and Drive on iOS logged in to a different one, Google is aware that those accounts are used by the same person. TOS-violation suspensions are likely to involve all of your accounts at once. The simple solution is to stop doing business with Google. They'll also hand all of your shit over to the CIA without a warrant even if you aren't doing anything wrong, so there's that, too.

jug 5y ago

I've thought about the same. I rely on Google too much. But "too much" is really only e-mail and cloud storage (Google Drive) for me. I only rely on cloud hosting for photos for a select few albums I intentionally want to share a link to, not as a full cloud of all my photos that I then rely on being there. I offload my phone and camera every now and then to local storage (NAS) at home, a hard drive in a safe deposit box at my bank, and then my Synology NAS runs an automated Backblaze backup which is very cost efficient for this use. So I would only really need to switch 1) my mail provider to something else, which is easier today now that I rely on "messengers" more than mail, so not many people that I need to inform. Just subscriptions and account details that I can update one at a time. 2) cloud storage to something else, and there are oceans of alternatives there, many very capable.

reginold 5y ago
for #1 you can take it step by step. get your own domain, name@domain.com for $10 a year. hook that address up to gmail so you can send as name@domain.com. then get comfortable with that, set it as your default reply from, tell friends, etc. then 6 months later, a year later or whenever youre comfortable you can move off gmail. only send from name@domain, and have gmail forward all your emails to that account. no one you contact will see anything different. then if you ever need to again switch in the future you're free to do so, and you're always name@domain.com.

jacob019 5y ago

That is why I have completely degoogled my life. Backup your photos ASAP! I'm using nextcloud as a google photos replacement. It's not quite as smooth as google photos but it works well enough and I control my data. The official app handles auto-upload of my photos. Yaga is a nice android client for viewing the photos on my degoogled phone. The web app works well for that too and there are even sharing features, so I can share an album or photo with friends, family, or whoever. Nextcloud has suitable replacements for notes, drive, docs, contact backup/sync, and more. It's a little bit of effort to set up but totally worth it to control my data and get privacy. Fastmail is a great paid replacement for gmail. It has calander, notes, and file storage features too. There are so many cloud storage options, really no excuse to use google drive. There are other turnkey google photo replacements as well these days, amazon and flickr come to mind. Google has nice apps but it's just not worth being their product, especially since they nerfed the free storage.

72deluxe 5y ago

I set up my own mail server following the guide here: https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/mail-server-guide/ https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/mail-server-guide/ I also referred to https://www.gmass.co/blog/smtp-server-linux/ https://www.gmass.co/blog/smtp-server-linux/ I also looked at OwnCloud, but ended up just syncing from my phone to local Mac and doing backups off that regularly. You could also rsync to other devices. A raspberry Pi with a SSD at home would work fine. If you have a VPN set up on your own network (eg. an ASUS router), you could use it to host photos/backups/music. If you home IP address is dynamic, use a free DDNS provider so you can always connect to your home site. Just make sure you get a copy of those photos sooner than later!!