4 ms·

I really feel that BS is a different use case.

by ronnier 14y ago

buro9 14y ago
You're probably right... the bittorrent speciality. I guess the marketing is to provide them with a nice level of deniability. It's not a Dropbox competitor, it's just encrypted folder sharing.
- manishsharan 14y ago
  I would respectfully disagree with what you seem to be implying. This service would mostly be used by us who are wary about trusting Google/Microsoft/Dropbox and the judgement of their automated decision systems with our life . Yesterday there was a HN story about a guy who got kicked off Google Docs because an automated program was trolling/mining through their users files and its judgement was not to be questioned by mere mortals. What if I put a picture of me and my kid playing in the swimming pool -- what is to prevent Dropbox/Google/Skydrive from tagging it as offensive and setting an overzealous DA or social-worker upon my family ? People have been arrested/detained at border crossings for perfectly innocuous pictures like these. Therefore if you think privacy is only important for people stealing stuff, your are being naive.
  - yid 14y ago
    Drop a TrueCrypt partition into your Dropbox [1], and you get the Dropbox QoS as well as the encryption for your kids' swimming pool photos. Plus, for non-swimming photos, you can just use the regular Dropbox folder. [1] http://tonyonsecurity.com/2012/08/05/securing-your-data-on-dropbox-truecrypt/ http://tonyonsecurity.com/2012/08/05/securing-your-data-on-d...
    - andrewflnr 14y ago
      Nonono. You shouldn't have to guess which photos will be flagged by some drone and put them in a special locker.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      Does this avoid conflicts in the event that you change two different files on the TrueCrypt volume at the same time on two different computers?
      - jpalomaki 14y ago
        I think BoxCryptor is better than TrueCrypt for this purpose. BoxCryptor encrypts each file separately so the sync works as expected. https://www.boxcryptor.com/ https://www.boxcryptor.com/
    - manishsharan 14y ago
      I am not looking to hide stuff; I merely do not want my stuff accessed by third parties without either a search warrant or my explicit consent on a file by file basis. BitTorrent Sync seems to have a cool solution for me; my home desktop is almost always on.
  - jmillikin 14y ago
    > Yesterday there was a HN story about a guy who got > kicked off Google Docs because an automated program was > trolling/mining through their users files and its > judgement was not to be questioned by mere mortals. Wasn't that the user who was using a Docs form/spreadsheet to collect passwords from his customers? Google has stated that such forms are reviewed manually after being reported (for example, http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/7pKj6aXBKpM http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/7pKj6aXBK...), which means there must have been at least two humans involved. IMO the risk with cloud storage isn't in getting suspended by some daemon run amok, it's in data being too easy to leak. Files stored in Google Drive or Dropbox are just one accidental "share" click away from becoming public.
    - manishsharan 14y ago
      I think you have your facts wrong. The topic I mentioned about the Google Docs user being summarily ejected was discussed here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591133 The link you submitted was a genuine scammer issue which was reported by users and dealt with correctly by Google.
      - jmillikin 14y ago
        That is the story I was talking about. The link in my post is just a citation as evidence that account suspension is a manual process.
    - malbs 14y ago
      Actually I was using a google docs spreadsheet to store usernames/passwords for various forums I had registered on. I didn't want to use any of the various password storage systems, the usernames/passwords weren't something I really cared if someone got a hold of them.. I created the file.. added a few forum links with user/pass combos.. and within about 48 hours, the file was nuked and I had an email from google stating a document I had put on google docs broke their terms of service. I went through the terms of service and couldn't find anything regarding passwords, but it did say that anything I put in google docs was owned by google and publishable by google, so I guessed that was the reason (they can't publish passwords?) edit: I didn't get kicked off of google docs altogether though, just the one file got nuked
  - zurn 14y ago
    Also there was a SkyDrive user who got all his MS stuff linked to the account nuked because he had taken half nude photos of someone with his phone and put them in his private folder in SkyDrive. http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-may-lose-your-microsoft-life/ http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-m...
- jcoder 14y ago
  And here I am, just 4 points shy of being able to downvote this.
  - zanny 14y ago
    I'll bring you one point closer and do that for you!
  - cyberfart 14y ago
    you sir, just won my first ever comment upvote (well, probably not the first ever)

I really feel that BS is a different use case.

by ronnier 14y ago

I really feel that BS is a different use case.

buro9 14y ago

You're probably right... the bittorrent speciality. I guess the marketing is to provide them with a nice level of deniability. It's not a Dropbox competitor, it's just encrypted folder sharing.

manishsharan 14y ago
I would respectfully disagree with what you seem to be implying. This service would mostly be used by us who are wary about trusting Google/Microsoft/Dropbox and the judgement of their automated decision systems with our life . Yesterday there was a HN story about a guy who got kicked off Google Docs because an automated program was trolling/mining through their users files and its judgement was not to be questioned by mere mortals. What if I put a picture of me and my kid playing in the swimming pool -- what is to prevent Dropbox/Google/Skydrive from tagging it as offensive and setting an overzealous DA or social-worker upon my family ? People have been arrested/detained at border crossings for perfectly innocuous pictures like these. Therefore if you think privacy is only important for people stealing stuff, your are being naive.
- yid 14y ago
  Drop a TrueCrypt partition into your Dropbox [1], and you get the Dropbox QoS as well as the encryption for your kids' swimming pool photos. Plus, for non-swimming photos, you can just use the regular Dropbox folder. [1] http://tonyonsecurity.com/2012/08/05/securing-your-data-on-dropbox-truecrypt/ http://tonyonsecurity.com/2012/08/05/securing-your-data-on-d...
  - andrewflnr 14y ago
    Nonono. You shouldn't have to guess which photos will be flagged by some drone and put them in a special locker.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    Does this avoid conflicts in the event that you change two different files on the TrueCrypt volume at the same time on two different computers?
    - jpalomaki 14y ago
      I think BoxCryptor is better than TrueCrypt for this purpose. BoxCryptor encrypts each file separately so the sync works as expected. https://www.boxcryptor.com/ https://www.boxcryptor.com/
  - manishsharan 14y ago
    I am not looking to hide stuff; I merely do not want my stuff accessed by third parties without either a search warrant or my explicit consent on a file by file basis. BitTorrent Sync seems to have a cool solution for me; my home desktop is almost always on.
- jmillikin 14y ago
  > Yesterday there was a HN story about a guy who got > kicked off Google Docs because an automated program was > trolling/mining through their users files and its > judgement was not to be questioned by mere mortals. Wasn't that the user who was using a Docs form/spreadsheet to collect passwords from his customers? Google has stated that such forms are reviewed manually after being reported (for example, http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/7pKj6aXBKpM http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/7pKj6aXBK...), which means there must have been at least two humans involved. IMO the risk with cloud storage isn't in getting suspended by some daemon run amok, it's in data being too easy to leak. Files stored in Google Drive or Dropbox are just one accidental "share" click away from becoming public.
  - manishsharan 14y ago
    I think you have your facts wrong. The topic I mentioned about the Google Docs user being summarily ejected was discussed here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591133 The link you submitted was a genuine scammer issue which was reported by users and dealt with correctly by Google.
    - jmillikin 14y ago
      That is the story I was talking about. The link in my post is just a citation as evidence that account suspension is a manual process.
  - malbs 14y ago
    Actually I was using a google docs spreadsheet to store usernames/passwords for various forums I had registered on. I didn't want to use any of the various password storage systems, the usernames/passwords weren't something I really cared if someone got a hold of them.. I created the file.. added a few forum links with user/pass combos.. and within about 48 hours, the file was nuked and I had an email from google stating a document I had put on google docs broke their terms of service. I went through the terms of service and couldn't find anything regarding passwords, but it did say that anything I put in google docs was owned by google and publishable by google, so I guessed that was the reason (they can't publish passwords?) edit: I didn't get kicked off of google docs altogether though, just the one file got nuked
- zurn 14y ago
  Also there was a SkyDrive user who got all his MS stuff linked to the account nuked because he had taken half nude photos of someone with his phone and put them in his private folder in SkyDrive. http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-may-lose-your-microsoft-life/ http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-m...
jcoder 14y ago
And here I am, just 4 points shy of being able to downvote this.
- zanny 14y ago
  I'll bring you one point closer and do that for you!
- cyberfart 14y ago
  you sir, just won my first ever comment upvote (well, probably not the first ever)