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Watch what you store on SkyDrive–you may lose your Microsoft life
- iso-8859-1 14y agoIs nudity allowed on other platforms? Dropbox? Google Drive?
- chris_wot 14y agoI'm jealous of your username. Anyway, back to the point: so what if they don't? Why are they looking at your private data?!?
- unimpressive 14y agoGoogle uses one generic TOS, I haven't found an Acceptable Use Policy, the TOS doesn't seem to mention it.: https://www.google.com/intl/en_US/policies/terms/ https://www.google.com/intl/en_US/policies/terms/ EDIT: Found it. https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148505&topic=2463295&ctx=topic https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans... "Don’t publish sexually explicit images or videos, such as those with nudity or graphic sex acts. Writing about adult topics is permitted as long as they aren't accompanied by sexually explicit images or videos, or any material that promotes or depicts unlawful or inappropriate sexual acts with children or animals. Additionally, we don't allow content that drives traffic to commercial pornography." ------------------------------------------------------------ Dropbox TOS don't seem to specifically mention it, they're Acceptable Use Policy notes that "unlawfully pornographic" and "indecent" material is not allowed: https://www.dropbox.com/terms https://www.dropbox.com/terms https://www.dropbox.com/acceptable_use https://www.dropbox.com/acceptable_use "You agree not to misuse the Dropbox services. For example, you must not, and must not attempt to, use the services to do the following things....publish or share materials that are unlawfully pornographic or indecent, or that advocate bigotry, religious, racial or ethnic hatred;"
- omh 14y agoGoogle drive also includes a link to their Program Policies: https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148505 https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans... This prohibits publishing "Violence", "Hate speech" and "Sexually explicit material", amongst other things. I'd guess it was written with more public publishing in mind, so it's not clear whether it's intended to include purely personal content on Google Drive.
- unimpressive 14y agoI actually edited that in a few minutes ago. And I was thinking the same thing as I read it, when they say "publish" do they mean make publicly available or store? I also wonder if the Dropbox AUP just adds "indecent" to the "unlawfully pornographic" statement, or means that they prohibit all indecent exposure. And that word "publish" shows up again.
- jeltz 14y agoMy guess is that publish must refer to making something public. That is the only sensible explanation.
- iso-8859-1 14y agoSounds like Dropbox have the best terms. In particular I like how they allow publishing lawful pornography, while SkyDrive doesn't even allow private nudity! A world of difference!
- sek 14y agoWell publish is a totally different thing, i have no problem with that as long private shares are excluded. I am not thrilled to publish my Porn Folder to the public anyway (and yeah, i admit i have one). Interesting would be if they scan anything unpublished.
- darklajid 14y agoMy wife's pregnant, I'm taking lots of 'Whoa, look at that belly' pictures, which are automatically synced with my Dropbox account. Nudity everywhere. ;-) I expect I'm having nude pictures of my son in about a month and a half. Ignoring that I just made fun of all these 'nude is evil' rules: Why should Dropbox look at my data, at all? If I ever get a confirmation that they so much as access it for purposes other than backing it up/restoring it or on my direct request (through the client apps/web ui or whatever) I'm going to leave them for good. They provide storage, not more. And storage attributes (bytes stored) is all they should care about.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mtgx 14y agoWhy should the cloud storage providers care what you store in your account, especially if it's all private? This sets a dangerous precedent. Imagine if Gmail didn't allow you to send "certain" images to someone else. I think if they keep doing this, either Microsoft or any other cloud storage provider, it will be a huge drawback in trying to convince people to store their files in there instead of their own their own devices. This is something we'll all worried about before cloud storage services took off, and now that worry is turning into reality.
- mooism2 14y agoThere is a trade-off between wanting people to store as many types of file as possible, and not wanting to get associated with some of those files. It would not do for Microsoft to get a reputation as "the company that helps wankers store their porn". Some people would use competitors instead because they object to porn, other people (and businesses) would use competitors so as not to associate themselves with porn either. Why does this reasoning apply to file lockers but not to e-mail? I have no idea.
- sek 14y agoWhat is the big problem with Porn anyway, especially the US where almost all Internet Porn comes from. Studies have found nearly every man consumes it, how can there be a stigma to it? Well of course we have to protect the children and they shouldn't find it accidentally, then publishing should be the only issue here.
- mooism2 14y agoPorn is associated with wanking, and wanking is stigmatised even though presumably most men have been wanking for far longer than most men have been using porn. Porn is also associated with prostitution, which is stigmatised as well. And some men feel that although of course there is nothing wrong with the porn they watch, the porn some other men watch leads the featured actresses into prostitution. And some men watch porn even though they feel it's morally wrong (and morally wrong things are stigmatised). They just don't have the self-control to stop themselves. (That makes them hypocrites, but most people are hypocrites one way or another.) I get that "protect the children" is an overused slogan these days, and not just in relation to adult porn. But it's far from the whole story. (n.b. I'm trying not to argue about what should be, I'm trying to talk about what is.)
- zhwang 14y agoI'm not surprised at all. If I recall correctly, there was a link posted a while back about someone breaking some condition in the Google TOS, and thus being locked out of their Google Account, and therefore all their email, documents, and so on. And that's why I'm trying to make sure I don't become too dependent on any one "cloud" ecosystem.
- chris_wot 14y agoGuess I won't be using SkyDrive then. Not because I store naked pictures (I don't!), but because they shouldn't be looking at what I'm storing on the drive! This is my private data.
- namidark 14y agoThen you should host it on your private cloud. PS: owncloud.org
- chris_wot 14y agoAgree with you 100% - I think I'll be doing this soon :-)
- pwny 14y agoThanks for making me discover owncloud! The only sad thing is that it uses server-side encryption, which I don't trust even if I own the server :( However, through the power and sheer awesomeness of open source, I might try to get my hands dirty at implementing client-side encryption sometime. The rest of the software looks perfect and I have a couple Linux boxes just begging to be used :)
- omh 14y agoWelcome to the cloud. If you work or play in space owned by someone else (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, whoever) then you have to realise that they can do almost anything they want. If this starts happening too regularly then consumers might start to rethink the benefits of cloud-based systems for running large parts of their lives.
- nestlequ1k 14y agoPainting way too broad a brush stroke. Just because an idiotic corporation has no idea how to administer their cloud products doesn't mean they are all bad. I've been using dropbox for years and I've never heard of anyone anywhere having their account shut down for having a nude photo. In fact, I know there's tons of pirated content on dropbox because when I add a pirated movie, 9 times out of 10 it get's synced immediately. That means that file exists there already and they can identify it via MD5 hash. They could have banned it based on some sort of blacklist, but they didn't. Probably because they understand that if they did, they would piss their paying customers off. So why spend effort trying to do that?
- omh 14y agoAbsolutely. I don't mean to suggest that nobody should ever use cloud services. But you should be aware that things like this happen, and that there are policies which let them happen. Dropbox might not be interested in blocking pirated content at the moment, but this could change in the future. Their polices already say that it isn't allowed, so what would you do if all of your pirated movies just disappeared one day?
- nestlequ1k 14y agoSimple: I'd stop paying for dropbox. And not only if they did this to me, but if I found out from a reliable source that they were doing this to anyone. I figure that's a good enough incentive for them to not try to monitor their files. But yeah, I pretty much agree with your basic point to not solely rely on cloud services. Always have a physical backup of stuff you actually want/need.
- 14y ago
- nestlequ1k 14y agoWow, this is insane. Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot here. Guidelines like this are a dealkiller for just about everyone. Even people who have no intention of putting questionable content on their drive will recoil on the mere idea that Microsoft is monitoring their private files. Big F up, but what's new with MS these days.
- s_henry_paulson 14y agoHmm, curious. The first guy that contacted Microsoft was told what the problem was, and given an opportunity to fix the problem. This next guy doesn't seem to have been given an opportunity to fix the problem. Perhaps just an untrained employee, or lack of a proper procedure in place by Microsoft. Regardless, the fallout from this is likely to be quite large, as the entire reason for putting your data in the "cloud" is that you trust that you'll be able to access it.
- drostie 14y agoI don't know; it seems like it might be a fringe enough usage case that it doesn't trigger peoples' outrage. Granted, people don't necessarily think of SkyDrive as a social platform, but with the frequency that embarrassing photos are uploaded to Facebook, you can imagine that there is either an ignorance or a nonchalance toward privacy among the same young people who'd use SkyDrive. Yes, it's seriously messed up that Microsoft employees are presumably snooping around in your private SkyDrive folders, and it has the potential to really get people to migrate away. But it requires overcoming a huge barrier of apathy, and I'm not sure this has the momentum to do so.
- DanBC 14y ago> [...] the entire reason for putting your data in the "cloud" is that you trust that you'll be able to access it. I agree that many people think this. But I cannot understand why they think it. I hear people talk about "cloud backups", when the only copy they have of a file is the one in the cloud.
- sp332 14y agoAccess doesn't mean backup. If I have a document in Google Docs only, I can access that from anywhere with an internet connection. If I'm talking about a cloud backup, I mean e.g. Dropbox where I have more than one copy.
- DanBC 14y agoBut even then, I can't understand why people think that SERVICE X is always on. Obviously there's a few people who know the up times and down times and make an informed choice. But many people just assume that it will always work, and who will suffer when that service is not available. Maybe my early experience of batch processing and unreliable utility supplies and a few experiences of dropped services has taught me, and that other people are living in a world with remarkably good up times and thus don't get the chance to learn that three nines is not six nines.
- philjohn 14y agoThe most disturbing thing here is that Microsoft are routinely looking at peoples private data to monitor it. Whether this takes the form of an automated program to flag things up, there's still going to be a human arbitrating the final decision. That's just creepy.
- bborud 14y agoGive it a few years and people will get used to it and come to accept it. Just look at air travel. It took just a decade to get people to accept having their genitals touched by people in uniform before getting on airplanes. There will be some very, very minor outrage initially, and then that will subside and people will obediently adapt. Some will even claim that it is your patriotic duty to accept it.
- dinkumthinkum 14y agoI don't think that's a good analogy though. People feel peer pressure to accept the humiliation of the TSA because it is for our "safety." When it comes to long term storage of our privates, I think there will be a different attitude.
- bborud 14y agoNo, people pretty much have exactly the same sort of attitude: "I have nothing to hide so this doesn't concern me". Just wait and see.
- Numberwang 14y agoI really like the practicality of my G-Drive, but these things scare me. What do you recommend for permanent online access and backup of your data? Do you encrypt your private photos etc?
- iso-8859-1 14y agoWe've been over this so many times... Backup != Dropbox and the like. Ask HN: What's your favorite online-backup tool?: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1946416 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1946416 See this thread from a week ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4224518 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4224518 In short: If you are a hacker or care about security and have money: SpiderOak or Tarsnap Source code: Git If you are poor and care about security: Dropbox with TrueCrypt (be careful that you don't mount simultaneously) None of the above and lazy: Dropbox vanilla (better terms, non-evil non-giant company)
- Numberwang 14y agoThanks for the reply and sorry for not checking the history. This is my first visit to HN.
- icebraining 14y agoI firmly recommend Tarsnap. Even though it's paid, it's fairly cheap (at least by European/US standards) since you only pay exactly what you use, the client application is open source and it's a one-man-show by Dr. Colin Percival, cperciva here on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva It's not for everyone, though: At the present time, Tarsnap does not support Windows (except via Cygwin) and does not have a graphical user interface.
- maayank 14y ago"Dropbox with TrueCrypt (be careful that you don't mount simultaneously)" What scenario do you refer to? Why would it be bad to run a non-paused Dropbox client and mount a TrueCrypt volume inside it at the same time?
- jakeonthemove 14y agoDamn, I've been using SkyDrive to store OneNote notebooks for easy sharing and editing. Never thought they actually check private folders - yet another reason to never store any sensitive or important information in the cloud...
- ldehaan 14y agoThis is why I use clients that do client side encryption. The data is encrypted on your local machine; usually compressed and then sent off to the cloud. The key is stored on your machine and there is no easy way for them to see the data you have stored. I used to use Jungledisk but switched to SpiderOak because the Linux client is much better. There really isn't much of a drawback other than you must never forget your password :) if you do you are pretty much out of luck.
- msh 14y agoI liked spideroak, but the client was exteemely slow on a core2dou mac with backup datasets larger than 50gig.
- ldehaan 14y agoI've no idea about the performance on mac, however if you haven't tried it out in the past couple of months they have really done some great updates to the clients. As far as slow with large datasets I have about 400GB (compressed down to ~300) that I am backing up, with regular additions on a daily basis. Some releases have been pretty sucky, but it keeps getting better, I would highly recommend them to anyone.
- zxoq 14y agoThis is why I prefer services to be with different providers. Having storage with dropbox, mail with gmail, phone with Apple etc. etc. means one service dying won't kill your entire online persona. While if you use G-drive, gmail, android phone, Google everything like they want you're basically screwed if you violate the TOS of any service.
- valdiorn 14y agoThis is especially bad when you lose money. As stated in the article, he lost apps that he had bought and paid for! This is a very gray area, and the fact that a software company can put arbitrary rules for one of its services that affect your assets in another domain, assets you paid for, is possible illegal. Think about what happened if you went to Wal-Mart and purchased clothes and other items there. Then, two years later, you cause an incident at Wal-Mart and you are banned from their store. Does that give Wal-Mart the right to come to your house and burn everything you previously bought at their store???
- conradfr 14y agoI think there is a problem with these accounts that encapsulate a lot of different services that need to be addressed. I had my Youtube account suspended and that subsequently banned me from my Gmail, Docs etc. You feel vulnerable. Maybe some kind of policy that forced the provider to at least block you only for a specific service ?
- robgough 14y agoThe problem here for me is not so much that MS found an image they didn't like and then over-reacted (which I rather think they did). It's that they have obviously written tooling specifically with the purpose of finding these things, and then shutting down accounts. That they think it's OK to routinely look at these files, where I think most consumers would have a reasonable expectation of privacy, highlights to me an extremely scary though process.
- mtgx 14y agoIndeed. Remember when the tech blogs made a big deal about Google Drive's privacy policy because of the wording, and saying how Skydrive has a bit better wording? Well it seems in the end it was Microsoft that was using actual people to look at private files, while Google just wanted to scan them automatically using algorithms for different stuff.
- bobsy 14y agoI don't think Microsoft know what they doing. All cloud storage providers need a policy similar to what Microsoft have. They cannot have pirated content, child porn etc on their servers. This rule should be strictly enforced on public folders. On private folders Microsoft shouldn't even be looking. While you should not be allowed to store "bad" content, it shouldn't be enforced on private folders unless there is some from of legal request. I don't understand why they think it should work any different. Skydrive should be a way to back up files. You cannot back up your files if someone is snooping on them or if your account is banned for accidentally including that risky photo of your wife in the back up folder... But fine. Whatever. Microsoft want to make their service unusable. Why are they then banning the entire live account? Suspending people from XBOX live and prohibiting them from using app purchases? If they are suspending the account the account holder needs to be refunded. Why don't they just prohibit the account from using SkyDrive? Microsoft have been getting better recently. On this though they seem to have completely lost the plot.
- mike-cardwell 14y agoI disagree. All cloud storage providers should have similar policies and should enforce them ruthlessly. Maybe then, people will take client side encryption seriously.
- tluyben2 14y agoI disagree. Unless illegal by law, it's your private data. If you share it, it would be something different, but as long as it's private, it's just weird. Others have them, but as long as you don't use the content PUBLICLY, they don't enforce, which is exactly correct. Edit: sorry, reread. You are right about the encryption part. I still stand by the rest :)
- powertower 14y agoThats the thing, for all we know the law states that they have to make an effort to remove child porn, pirated movies, etc.
- arihant 14y agoOne obvious way to handle this on private folders is client side encryption. Companies need to be protected, and users need privacy. This seems win-win. If an agency need to look in private folder, they must go through user - and that would at least have legal recourse.
- Woost 14y agoThere is, actually, a loss to the provider. Every person's version of pirated movie X will be unique, which means the provider has to pay for more storage space than they would without encryption. (since without encryption they could compute a hash of the file and point to it on their servers)
- kmfrk 14y agoReminds me of the people who lose access to Gmail, because they violate some completely arbitrary rule on Google+. I can't believe companies do so much to deter people from their cloud services. That'd be like Apple shutting down the iTunes and iCloud of a developer, who hacked around in iOS. I hope that has yet to happen.
- braindead_in 14y agoWhat about encrypted content? Is that disallowed too?
- rbanffy 14y agoWhen it comes to Microsoft, I always wonder whether it's just incompetence or a very clever attempt to discredit the whole cloud idea that threatens their cash cows (that are based on the rather outdated concept of local software and data). BTW, this is the creepiest "GMail Man" variant ever.
- hexagonc 14y agoThis is unlikely, since Microsoft has put a lot of money and marketing behind their own cloud offering, Azure. It also is inconsistent with everything that they are trying to do with Office360.
- gbraad 14y agoI read the Dutch thread on Tweakers.net related to the suspesion of WingsOfFury. This was done because of a favorites folder which contained links to inappropriate material. So, in effect, making a backup of your links can lead to a blockage/suspension?!?!?!
- DanBC 14y agoMost of those are, IMO, reasonable requests. > contains or could be considered ‘junk mail’, ‘spam’, ‘chain letters’, ‘pyramid schemes’, ‘affiliate marketing’ or unsolicited commercial advertisement. The amount of spam I used to get that was "Send this to 5 other people or bad things will happen" was amazing, and it'd be a shame if they were banning people who were storing all their email. > depicts nudity of any sort including full or partial human nudity or nudity in non-human forms such as cartoons, fantasy art or manga. This is baffling. I can make a guess at what nude means - "a naked human, or a human with breasts or genitals on display." But I'm lost at partial human nudity. Is a man with shoes, socks, trousers, and an unbuttoned shirt clothed, or partially nude? What about if he takes his shirt off? What if he's a slob, or if he's like the guy in the diet coke ad? What if the image is a woman in a long t-shirt (with non-visible underwear). I understand the need for wriggle-room with these types of rules, but they need to make this a bit clearer to avoid regular photos being banned. <http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1502278/> http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1502278/&#...; I don't understand why MS don't allow you to migrate your stuff out of their service. This guy appears to have lost a lot of stuff. He was a dedicated MS user - he even had a Win7 phone (now useless) - but he isn't anymore.
- riffraff 14y agoyour guess seems strange, I believe: * what nudity means - "a naked human.." * what partial nudity means "..a human with breasts or genitals on display"
- tluyben2 14y agoWell, in some countries and beliefs a bare ankle is nudity, in others breasts are not (in the Netherlands in the summer you often see naked breasts in the summer even FAR from beaches). So no, it's very non-clear. Also, children; you cannot take your baby daughter's picture with bare upper body???
- riffraff 14y agowell, I doubt there is a culture where there is no distinction between a part and the whole. What "partial nudity" means is very arguable and _has been_ argued (e.g. many stories of services not allowing breast feeding pictures), I was just pointing out the specific differentiation between full and partial seems simple. About children: of course I don't see anything bad with pictures of naked kids, but the service has very little chances of knowing whether those pictures of 7 years olds are your nieces' or you're in a shady business, and they are reasonable to protect themselves. We live in a fucked up society. Obviously, there are huge gaps between stating rules, actually enforcing them, and enforcing them in a dumb way.
- corford 14y agoThe only cloud based personal data storage company I trust, use and recommend to my friends is SpiderOak: Easy to use client, gobs of storage and it's absolutely impossible for them to see your data.
- msh 14y agoWindows Phone got a feature to auto upload all the photos you take on the phone to skydrive, I would imagine a lot of people would run foul of these rules...
- rickmb 14y agoSo Microsoft is peeking into private folders, and judging the contents based on political and religious values not inscribed in any law? And completely terminates all Microsoft service to anyone found wanting to obey by these fundamentalist directives? The warning should not be "watch what you store on SkyDrive", the warning should be "stay the hell away from Microsoft".
- Auguste 14y agoThe same thought crossed my mind as I read the article. How does Microsoft know what I'm storing in a private directory? Creepy level: 110%
- Jabbles 14y agoProbably by hashing your files and comparing them to a known list of "banned content". I imagine this is one of the ways Gmail disallows child-porn or malware to be sent. Less likely but more worryingly it could be skin-tone detection and other pornography detection algorithms with a human filter.
- regularfry 14y agoIn this case they were photos the guy took himself. It's hard to see how they would have got onto a blacklist unless Microsoft put them there.
- dinkumthinkum 14y agoNaw, I think they just have cheap humans going through it. No big algorithms there. :)
- shabda 14y agoFrom the code of conduct.: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-live/code-of-conduct http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-live/code-of-cond... > provides or creates links to external sites that violate this Code of Conduct. Along with > depicts nudity of any sort including full or partial human nudity or nudity in non-human forms such as cartoons, fantasy art or manga. So linking to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturism would be enough to get banned, no?
- ginko 14y agoIt's things like that why I believe that cloud computing and Web 2.0 are a bad idea. Data and processing power should belong to the user and not corporations.
- savoy11 14y agoyes, you are better off Apple taking care of your business and taking 1/3 IF YOU SUCCEED. Early 30's Chicago style. You pathetic Hacker News nerds, you are so so funny. Average Microsoft Partner company makes 1000% more without the pathetic 10K investment. You are... pathetic.
- jasonhanley 14y agoTrusting Microsoft with cloud storage is akin to using Hotmail for email. It's unthinkable for anyone with technical knowledge, but often the only option that non-techies are aware of. The best we can do is educate others to use something sensible.
- Spooky23 14y agoThis is like a hotel manager kicking you out because you and your partner are having sex. Why? Because prostitutes have sex too, and we don't want our hotel associated with that. There are other, more troubling things here too. Materials related to the sale of firearms and ammunition are prohibited. Firearms in various forms are completely legal to own and trade to various degrees in the United States, why are documents relating to that trade of firearms banned? I also see that anything that incites, advocates or expresses profanity is prohibited. I would advocate that all SkyDrive users place a copy of the terms of service in their account. This should incite most people to express their opinion of Microsoft's actions by saying "Fuck you, Microsoft", and thus violating the terms of service.
- delinka 14y agoI agree with your analogy. I don't understand your last two sentences. I don't get how advocating users placing copies of the ToS in their accounts incites people to express their opinions with a "fuck you, MS."
- Spooky23 14y agoI guess I fumbled the satirical point that I was trying to make. Most folks don't read terms of service documents. But, putting this particular terms of service document on your SkyDrive and reading it would incite many people to express their opinion of the document using profanity. (It certainly had that effect on me ;) )
- Wintamute 14y agoThe user you replied to is (humorously) suggesting that since the SkyDrive ToS are so objectionable they are quite likely to incite profanity (at least amongst the internet cognoscenti), thus itself becoming a forbidden item under its own ToS if placed in a SkyDrive. 'Twas a form of satire, ridicule intended to expose truth.
- ctdonath 14y agoThanks for pointing out the arms/ammo ban. Didn't notice that very relevant point amid the proliferation of prohibitions. This sucks for us federally licensed collectors (FFL C&R); bizarre that storing a copy of my license on SkyDrive could cause MS to completely reject me as a customer/user. Seems a "final straw". Instead of "place a copy...", I'd suggest rating SkyDrive "zero" and deleting it.
- einhverfr 14y agoFrom the Terms of Service: "incites, advocates, or expresses pornography, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity, hatred, bigotry, racism, or gratuitous violence. " Wow, not only is it impermissible to upload pornography but apparently it is impermissible to talk about it too.... Nor can one express hatred of an ex or even say that there are times when hating another person or even an idea is beneficial! Way to go Microsoft! I HATE Neo-Nazis! Good thing I am not posting a document that says that to Skydrive!
- delinka 14y agoSo why aren't you encrypting everything you stick in The Cloud?
- ralfn 14y agoSo, technically and appearantly practically, you cant privately store a picture of yourself being born. Seriously, when did it suddenly become okay for companies to police our culture? Imagine cars breaking down because you used it to drive to known bad neigbourhood? Imagine dinner plates that break down because you out meat on them? Imagine fruit juice that evaporates if you mix it with alcohol? Why is Microsoft targetting the amish people? It does not make economic sense.
- pjmlp 14y agoThis is what happens when you rely on the "cloud" for private data. Private data is at home, or in backups stored in the bank, not at someone else network.
- garrym 14y agoOne of the reasons you should use personal cloud offerings like Tonido (http://www.tonido.com http://www.tonido.com) instead of public online cloud services. Disclaimer: I work for Tonido.
- rshlo 14y agono response from Microsoft on that? They should at least email them and ask them if that's what they intended to happen with the service.
- vipervpn 14y agoI guess I'm in the minority to side with Microsoft on this one. Look, the guy uploaded nudes, maybe it was even porn. He violated the rules. This isn't censorship, it's not creepy, it's the rules.
- alan_cx 14y ago"Maybe".
- malloc 14y agoIdeally, client side encryption might be a good solution for this. From what I've seen, there isn't a public API to work with skydive. Even some open-source efforts are mostly outdated by now. Maybe that could be something worth looking?
- mquinlan 14y agoI've actually had this happen to me a few months ago; I tried to sign in and my account was locked due to some private pictures I had stored. I decided to just wait out the the "grace period" they gave me. When I checked back a few weeks later, my account was left unchanged. I hadn't even contacted support, so I'm curious as to why my situation was any different. As far as I can tell, all charges were dropped.
- pragmatic 14y ago> depicts nudity of any sort including full or partial human nudity or nudity in non-human forms such as cartoons, fantasy art or manga. What about pictures of your kids? Anyone who has kids has the ubiquitous first bath, bathtub hijinks pictures of small children. Where does this cross the line into child pr0n? What if you catch a "private" part by accident in the frame? These are _not_ for public consumption but may appear on private cloud storage due to backups, etc. This is a large issue as more and more companies are backing your stuff up in the cloud. You as a consumer may not even realize where your _private_ content is going.
- antihero 14y ago"Partial nudity" - what the fuck is this, the 1950s?
- etfb 14y agoThis made me go check the terms and conditions for DropBox, and they're much better. The closest they come is saying you may not "publish or share materials that are unlawfully pornographic or indecent, or that advocate bigotry, religious, racial or ethnic hatred". That's a whole lot different to Microsoft's banning of any kind of porn, lawful or otherwise, even when it's not published or shared.
- mmagin 14y agoThe latter clause is awfully broad and subjective. If someone put in their Dropbox account pictures of say, artifacts of the Nazi regime, would that be violating the rules? It's not at all clear that that would be advocating bigotry, religious, racial or ethnic hatred on the part of the user themselves, but it clearly was related to historical political movements which did so.
- etfb 14y agoThe key is the verb "publish". Putting it in your Dropbox account != publishing it.
- D9u 14y agoThe OP is "wmpowerusers.com" (Windoze Mobile Power Users) yet the site doesn't even scale to my mobile device? Someone needs to clue in on "viewport" either in meta or CSS. That said, I don't see this as a newsworthy item. It's more of a crybaby thing.
- draakon 14y agoHmm... I don't fully understand following sentence from Microsoft Services Agreement ( http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/microsoft-service-agreement http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/microsoft-se... ): > We also don't control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service. Isn't scanning my private content for nudity a verifying? Or what does it mean in this context.
- ekiara 14y agoSince SkyDrive no longer has a restricted list of filetypes allowed for upload. How hard would it be to only upload encrypted files? A neat solution would be a client side utility that encrypts local files (or entire folders/tarballs) with gpg, generates checksums, splits them into 2048KB or 1024KB chunks and uploads those to SkyDrive. The downside is that there would have to be some sort of management/database locally (and on every machine you wanted to download the files to) that would keep track of which chunks make up which file and rebuilds everything when you download them.
- alan_cx 14y agoThis makes me so angry, and I should know better. Sorry, why are people falling for the cloud? The whole thing is absurd. We had all our data nice and safe, we could make it accessible across the net, and it was complete in our control. Then some one came up with a new trendy way of ruining all that. Now, for some reason I am yet to understand, we give control of our data, data being the most precious thing in IT since you cant go out and buy a replacement, to bible bashing, moralistic, judgemental, board meetings in big corporations. HELLO????????? This is the biggest kings new clothes situation since Satan knows when. Guys, you know how this works. Stop marching in towards the edge of the cliff. Its is no use bleating on and on about privacy etc, when almost every one is buying in the the cloud regime. When the hell did these companies ever respect your privacy and right to your own morality. You know they don't. Yet ever single time this sort of issues crops up there is almost utter surprise. Its like watching a woman being beaten up for the 100th time by her psycho husband. Please, the king has no clothes. None. Secure you own data your way. Thanks for the rant space.
- vsviridov 14y agoSwiss banks should start offering cloud storage. 'Cause then we'd be somewhat sure that they are not peeking inside...
- tlogan 14y agoThe problem is here is that they are peeking into private folders. So if their algorithm gets 'positive' my private folder will get scanned by some employee. That is just creepy - really creepy.
- dinkumthinkum 14y agoYou mean the Cloud is not the panacea for online life that everyone acts like it is? You mean there's a reason you may not want to ditch having your own storage hardware in favor of "all cloud all the time." huh. Seriously, why would anyone use this service. No profanity?
- icebraining 14y agowhy would anyone use this service Because we can stick truecrypt containers in it? Not that I use it personally, I prefer Tarsnap.
- at-fates-hands 14y agoI've been using the a Windows 7 phone and Skydrive is part of the deal. I haven't uploaded a lot of photos, but to find out they're going through my stuff makes me feel pretty uneasy. Glad I'm going back to my Android based phone this weekend.
- logical42 14y agoLosing your Microsoft life is more of a selling point for skydrive, no?
- zmmmmm 14y agoThe really interesting angle to this is that (apparently) Windows 8 and the next version of office are going to default to storing a lot of stuff in Skydrive. So unless you actively try to store stuff locally it is going up to the cloud. It will be very interesting to watch what happens as a tidal wave of (intended to be) private porn hits Skydrive and consumers get their accounts banned en masse. Like others, I think MS is in a dead end street here. There is stuff that they just can't allow - harboring child porn is illegal regardless of whether you're storing it for someone else, etc. But if they don't default content into Skydrive then hardly anybody will use it and people will keep assuming Google Docs and other cloud services are just "better" for collaboration. The only way out is client side encryption, but that disables many server side functions (eg: search) and gets god-awful complex for sharing between parties.
- CamperBob2 14y agoFrom the list of prohibitions: "...is illegal or violates any applicable local and national laws" So a photo of any woman not wearing a burkha, if placed in my private SkyDrive folder, can result in the loss of my Hotmail and Xbox Live accounts. Wow. What kind of idiot would do business with these people?!
- mariuolo 14y agoI recall google doing something like that after introducing G+.
- KeyBoardG 14y agoTL:DR Everything you put on the internet is transparent. If you want something private, encrypt or keep it to yourself.