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Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

nytimes.com

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Re: Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

#51
post #24

In a related vein, I created a thing called VMSave a few years ago to let people easily save outgoing voicemail messages, something that the carriers make significantly harder than it should be. It’s saved almost 15,000 messages so far. https://vmsave.petekeen.net

This is really neat. I despise voicemail and never use it but for those that do it would be wonderful down the road.

Re: Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

#52
post #18

Not quite what I expected when I clicked on this, but anyway. I would never treat my phone as my only copy of my data. I don't consider phone storage to be permanent OR a backup. If you're into preserving your memories that are locked into your online services and apps like Google Photos, Facebook, Twitter, etc, I've started a project called Timeliner which downloads your data to your own home computers: https://gith…

I've been looking for something like this for Reddit. I'd love to be able to pull down all of my comments there (ideally with context). The only things on my phone that I don't regularly back up are text conversations. I've seen tools that forward all your texts to a gmail account, but I'm not really looking to give all that data to Google assuming they aren't already reading them off my device.

I'm using Signal for text messaging as well, and thus can use its automatic backup functionality (only on Android currently, I think ). In case it's useful to you.

Re: Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

#53

After going through my dad's computer while trying to fix it for him, I realized that there are a lot of things I really don't want to know about my parents. Everything I know about them is enough. Digging through their texts, their browsing history, their emails, etc is not fair in my opinion, and better left unread.

I have a similar story.

I bought a used NAS at a garage sale. The woman said it was her husband's, who had passed away a couple months ago.

I took it home and fired it up. It didn't have a password on it or anything. So I went looking through photos of the backyard, birdfeeders, and thought "wow it's so sad this stuff was just given away". I felt bad for the family who might be missing all his photos.

Then after a few more minutes it got way darker. The NAS had what looked like child porn on it. Some candid videos of a teenage girl adjusting her bra when she thinks nobody's looking, some more hardcore porn with someone who either was or at least tried really hard to look underaged.

So now here I was, in possession of child pornography (maybe?), on a drive from a garage sale, belonging to a dead man. That is a fucking dilemma. A million scenarios ran through my head. Was this was some sort of set-up? Would I face criminal charges for possessing this?

I took it to the police, they eventually reviewed it and told me there was nothing illegal on it. They asked me if I wanted it back, I told them to dispose of it.

Re: Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like timeliner requires your phone's files to be uploaded to a third party cloud beforehand. If you want to directly backup files from your phone to your home computer or NAS, https://syncthing.net/ and https://www.resilio.com/individuals-sync/ have android, iOS, desktop, and NAS support. It's what I've been recommending to PhotoStructure's beta users, and both seem to work well.

Can you link to iOS version of Syncthing? Main page doesn't link to it.

Huh, I could have sworn there was, but I don't see it there, either.

On iOS I've only used Resilio Sync, fwiw.

Re: Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

#56
post #18

Not quite what I expected when I clicked on this, but anyway. I would never treat my phone as my only copy of my data. I don't consider phone storage to be permanent OR a backup. If you're into preserving your memories that are locked into your online services and apps like Google Photos, Facebook, Twitter, etc, I've started a project called Timeliner which downloads your data to your own home computers: https://gith…

A nice feature of plex media server is that the app on your phone will back up your photos to your home server.

Re: Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

#57
post #53

After going through my dad's computer while trying to fix it for him, I realized that there are a lot of things I really don't want to know about my parents. Everything I know about them is enough. Digging through their texts, their browsing history, their emails, etc is not fair in my opinion, and better left unread.

I have a similar story. I bought a used NAS at a garage sale. The woman said it was her husband's, who had passed away a couple months ago. I took it home and fired it up. It didn't have a password on it or anything. So I went looking through photos of the backyard, birdfeeders, and thought "wow it's so sad this stuff was just given away". I felt bad for the family who might be missing all his photos. Then after a fe…

I would have gone to the police with my lawyer, I would have asked for everything I say to be recorded. You were trusting the police to do the right thing bye you. Risky strategy.

Re: Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

#58
post #18

Not quite what I expected when I clicked on this, but anyway. I would never treat my phone as my only copy of my data. I don't consider phone storage to be permanent OR a backup. If you're into preserving your memories that are locked into your online services and apps like Google Photos, Facebook, Twitter, etc, I've started a project called Timeliner which downloads your data to your own home computers: https://gith…

I've been looking for something like this for Reddit. I'd love to be able to pull down all of my comments there (ideally with context). The only things on my phone that I don't regularly back up are text conversations. I've seen tools that forward all your texts to a gmail account, but I'm not really looking to give all that data to Google assuming they aren't already reading them off my device.

I've used SMS Backup and Restore on Android. Exports to xml, and can include mms if desired.

It's pretty good overall, though emojis can cause issues. They offer 2 settings on how to handle them.

Re: Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

#60
There are some pretty explicit instructions as to what should happen to my digital stuff after I pass away, no need for any of my offspring to go digging around in there. If there is anything that I think they need to know I'll be sure to give it to them firsthand.
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