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Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

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Re: Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

#121

Does anyone have suggestions for a self hosted photo service with - importantly - a solid iOS companion app to do photo sync and possibly browse photos? I would prefer using a simple S3 backend. It seems that finding a reliable photo sync'ing app for iOS (outside of Google Photos or Dropbox) is difficult. I've been manually using Image Capture and uploading to S3 but that's quite inefficient. Thanks!

Not S3, but self hosted by NAS and can push encrypted backups to S3 - Synology Moments? https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/moments

Re: Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

#123

Does anyone have suggestions for a self hosted photo service with - importantly - a solid iOS companion app to do photo sync and possibly browse photos? I would prefer using a simple S3 backend. It seems that finding a reliable photo sync'ing app for iOS (outside of Google Photos or Dropbox) is difficult. I've been manually using Image Capture and uploading to S3 but that's quite inefficient. Thanks!

I find Nextcloud pretty great. There's a sync client available on f-droid. It also has capabilities for calendar and contact list synchronisation, so you can move that off your google account.

It came preinstalled with my instance of mail-in-a-box (https://mailinabox.email/), which is an easy way of hosting your own email. With my self-hosted instance of mailinabox and LineageOS my phone is completely google-free. :)

Edit: And it has a decent iOS sync client as far as I know.

Re: Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

#124

The usual argument for using "cloud" over managing your own files/data is that it's very hard to safely manage your own data without making mistakes (data loss, etc). However, this is an example of how companies like Google also make mistakes. Furthermore, when Google/FB makes a mistake (like leaking your private data) they do it at a global scale. I offboarded myself from all of Google's services a while ago, but I…

> I don't trust, and never will trust, any company to hold on to my data without either selling it to a third party or accidentally leaking it. This is a very black and white way of looking at trust. Trust is earned, it can be broken, it can be rebuilt. All human relationships are built upon trust, and it is fallible just like anything else. To have trust is to create vulnerability. However, just as you mention, that…

Or why trust someone if you don’t have to. Why do we have locks on doors and store passwords as hashed strings? Trust sucks.

Re: Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

#125

Does anyone have suggestions for a self hosted photo service with - importantly - a solid iOS companion app to do photo sync and possibly browse photos? I would prefer using a simple S3 backend. It seems that finding a reliable photo sync'ing app for iOS (outside of Google Photos or Dropbox) is difficult. I've been manually using Image Capture and uploading to S3 but that's quite inefficient. Thanks!

Not self hosted but mega.nz has a really good photo syncing app and all data is encrypted

Re: Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

#126

The usual argument for using "cloud" over managing your own files/data is that it's very hard to safely manage your own data without making mistakes (data loss, etc). However, this is an example of how companies like Google also make mistakes. Furthermore, when Google/FB makes a mistake (like leaking your private data) they do it at a global scale. I offboarded myself from all of Google's services a while ago, but I…

I get an absolutely endless parade of other people's data to my gmail account. Doctors send me MRI scans. Bankers send me foreclosure notices. Airlines send me tickets. Undertakers send me condolences. The preponderance of evidence suggests that relying on individual vigilance on a large scale does not work as well as relying on the vigilance of large organizations.

"I get an absolutely endless parade of other people's data to my gmail account."

Same. Part of it is just incorrectly addressed emails sent to my primary address. The other flood of emails I receive is on a domain where I've got a catch-all, and I regularly receive emails intended for recipients on a similar domain.

Re: Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

#127
post #115

So far it seems that Google is notifying the people who received videos that weren't theirs, not yet the people what had their video leaked. > Google has been sending emails to affected Takeout users. In the email, which was first spotted by 9to5Google, Google writes, "Some videos in Google Photos were incorrectly exported to unrelated user's archives. One or more videos in your Google Photos account was affected by…

The way I read it, it seems that only Takeout users were affected, on either end. Either way, this still needs to be made explicit for the sake of transparency.

Re: Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

#128

The usual argument for using "cloud" over managing your own files/data is that it's very hard to safely manage your own data without making mistakes (data loss, etc). However, this is an example of how companies like Google also make mistakes. Furthermore, when Google/FB makes a mistake (like leaking your private data) they do it at a global scale. I offboarded myself from all of Google's services a while ago, but I…

> I don't trust, and never will trust, any company to hold on to my data without either selling it to a third party or accidentally leaking it. This is a very black and white way of looking at trust. Trust is earned, it can be broken, it can be rebuilt. All human relationships are built upon trust, and it is fallible just like anything else. To have trust is to create vulnerability. However, just as you mention, that…

Most direct human to human relationships don't come with a 40 page privacy policy and terms of use that they reserve the right to change on a dime. A rational stance is not to trust anyone that requires you to agree to a bunch of legalese without having a lawyer review it first.

Re: Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

#129

Does anyone have suggestions for a self hosted photo service with - importantly - a solid iOS companion app to do photo sync and possibly browse photos? I would prefer using a simple S3 backend. It seems that finding a reliable photo sync'ing app for iOS (outside of Google Photos or Dropbox) is difficult. I've been manually using Image Capture and uploading to S3 but that's quite inefficient. Thanks!

Not self hosted but mega.nz has a really good photo syncing app and all data is encrypted

Thank you, the great iOS app and end-to-end encryption really sealed the deal. Also being able to try it out with the 50Gb included in the free account...!

I'll be moving backups there. Maybe I can run a weekly / monthly rclone to sync Mega to S3 to have some redundancy.

Thanks!

Re: Some Google Photos videos in backups were sent to strangers in November

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. If I screw up, then the worst case is pretty much that the data is gone. If the cloud provider screws up, then the worst case is that my video goes viral and lives on the internet forever. It isn't hard to imagine some troll finding he got some embarrassing video via takeout and putting it up on reddit for everyone to see.

Other worst cases - you leave the firewall wide open, and some script kiddies steal the photos, replace them with kiddie porn and refer you to the police.

This is a risk regardless of where I store my data. If I have a machine with any local storage of any kind at all, then someone could break in and store stuff there.

So this is not a differentiator between storing your own data in the cloud and locally.

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