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Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

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Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#101
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that feature would be incompatible with user data in a GDPR world ??

Git is also incompatible with GDPR, you can't simply delete a file from all history.

Git allows you to rewrite history, that is not the problem.

But you might have a hard time chasing down every copy, it's a distributed system by design.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#102
post #49

This is all because someone thought it would be “easy” to add a stream of recurring revenue for cloud photo storage but didn’t take the time to design the service from a technical perspective to be resilient enough to not crash and burn.

This can be just calculated risk. Incredible damage for some users can be negligible damage to the company. In this case just 10TB of data was lost, so maybe thousands of users for the long term storage option. Losing customer data has potential for big reputation or brand damage, but surprisingly often the damage is relatively small. Putting in too much effort when potential damage to business is minimal may not be…

A “calculated risk” doesn’t make it okay when the risk is all on the consumer losing their memories. This corporate view on business risk alone is unethical.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#103
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On topic topic, can I get HN’s advice on my backup strategy? All important files on Synology Ds218+ NAS, which has 2x12TB helium HDDs in mirror. Daily HyperBackup to Google Drive. I test restoring files on a monthly basis. Email alerts on failure. Anything I can improve?

You’re way ahead of the average. The only improvement I can think of would be to server side copy the backup files to another Google Drive account that the account linked to HyperBackup can not access. That way if the Synology gets hacked it cannot delete the offsite backup too.

To add slightly, a "pull" backup from a second backup storage system is possibly a less likely to be a route that an attacker could take from your production system to compromise backups vs a "push" backup from a more open production system.

So, for example, ssh key access from backup to production, but not vice versa. Definitely keeping that backup system as simple and low access as possible.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#105
post #94
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>budgets to engineer redundancies You dont need that, but a backup ;)

They obviously do have _some_ backups (since were able to restore all videos and all photos - but not all photos at the original resolution). In the end it's all a tradeoff... ignoring cost, we all know what to do to get pretty safe storage. But how much are you really willing to pay, per month, for that safety?

>but not all photos at the original resolution

Thats why you backup the original data and NOT the downscaled etc one.

>But how much are you really willing to pay, per month, for that safety?

You have to backup ALL your customers data, otherwise DONT go into file-hosting business.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#106
post #17

This is all because someone thought it would be “easy” to add a stream of recurring revenue for cloud photo storage but didn’t take the time to design the service from a technical perspective to be resilient enough to not crash and burn.

More likely than not some manager decided all those extra nines weren't really necessary.

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted since you can clearly see echoes of this manager in the comments above...

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#107
post #27
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely than not some manager decided all those extra nines weren't really necessary.

The manager probably put five 9s onto the spec sheet, and provided absolutely no resources. You’ll never guess who’s going to get the heat for this, the manager or the poor person who didn’t follow the spec.

A reliability guarantee I like to call "nine fives".

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#108
post #71

This is all because someone thought it would be “easy” to add a stream of recurring revenue for cloud photo storage but didn’t take the time to design the service from a technical perspective to be resilient enough to not crash and burn.

"Is image.canon free to use? Yes, it is free to use." from: image.canon/st/en/faq.html so as of now there is no recurring revenue added as of now

Selling customer data is a recurring stream. There’s likely also something in there about selling access to photo sets for training purposes.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#110
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that is that under GDPR you have to support full deletion of an user's data.

Not necessarily if you have a valid reason to storing the data. You might for example have to keep user's billing data around for legal reasons.

Was this billing data though?
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