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Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

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Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#41

Post by N00bN00b »

scohesc wrote: post #30
croes wrote: post #16

How many times does that have to happen before people realize there is no cloud, only other people's computers. The data that is stored there is no longer yours, just as thanks to Apple and Co. your hardware no longer really belongs to you, but you only enjoy a temporary right of use. It will be interesting to see when hardly anything remains of an entire generation because everything comes from the cloud: Photos, vi…

That's honestly really scary and I never thought of that.

There is a counter movement, for example, these guys place a significant role (and as far as I know primarily with a practical focus): https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#42

Post by dudus »

slownews45 wrote: post #23

I'm on the AWS cloud. I've never had a problem like this. I pay the $100 / month for the basic AWS support plan. Even store side AWS has done reasonably OK by me (except for all the crap listings in their storefront - wish they'd fix that). By this I mean any problem I've had has been fixed. So at least Amazon has SOME humans still in the loop handling AWS support tickets and Amazon store calls.

I'm on Google Cloud and Google Drive and have never had a problem like that either. I have Google One and it gives me access to humans when needed for chat, email and phone support.

I pay way less than $100/month

My evidence is as good as yours. Anecdotal.

I think the real lesson here is that you should backup your data. Simple as that.

The guy losing access to their Google account today is at fault just like the guy that lost all his data because his HD got burned a decade ago. It's just slightly easier to blame Google than to blame a faulty drive. But ultimately you are the one to blame.

Just backup your Google Drive to a S3 storage or equivalent. And maybe keep a local copy in an HD or optical media.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#43

Post by tyingq »

I'm curious if "has locked my account" means just Google Drive, or if he also lost Gmail, Android functionality, Chrome profiles, Adwords, YouTube, YouTubeTV, purchased movies and tv shows, Fitbit, Nest, sites where he used federated login (DoorDash, Uber, etc).

I see, for example, his YouTube channel is up, but it's associated with 'team@armouredarchives.com', and not the personal gmail account he posted in the linked forum.

If it was the entire account, something really needs to be done with Google to force them to make these kind of actions as narrow as possible. They can really disrupt your life with a broad account lock.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#44

Post by cgio »

jeffbee wrote: post #14

As a person who formerly worked on the technical side of anti-abuse (both content and account) at Google, I urge you to read these kinds of reports critically. There is no reason to believe any of the details given in the post, which incorporates a lot of supposition about how this system works. For example, we have no rational basis for believing that this was done by some robot at Google. It is at least as likely t…

A user flagging is not the same as banning. The process that follows a flag can have human intervention and the assumption is that it does not currently in Google. As someone who worked in this space you could provide information on the process that would be valuable. Or maybe not on the basis of NDA or policy. In the former please do, and let us know the human touch points in the process end to end. If the latter, similar to your criticism for taking what OP says as granted, we cannot also take what you say as granted just by virtue of work experience you claim in a forum.

We actually do not care if Google comments or not, that is an internal policy decision for the time being. With legislation in Europe though I believe it will have to explain automated decisions and also will have to provide users with their content.

I am inclined to believe, btw, that someone who stored terrorism or other questionable material, would not be bold and stupid enough to make noise about losing access to it.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#45

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

whymauri wrote: post #33
prox wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have HDDs running longer than most Google projects do. So that point is really moot.

Ditto. And when I felt it was near end-of-life, I just moved it over to a more stable SSD. I'm honestly thinking I'm going to have to backup my entire G-Drive externally and wipe it (for the security of my Google account). I mean, who knows what will trigger the deletion of your Google account these days... I guess the storage I pay for is just for e-mails.

Incidentally, I’ve had more SSDs fail - or misbehave - on me than spinning-rust drives now. And I don’t just mean cheap SSDs either, but an Intel Optane 905p I own results in hundreds of PCI Express bus errors every minute when plugged-in to any ASUS motherboard I own, while a SATA Intel 530 woke-up one day completely unreadable. And throw-in a couple of Samsung SSD failures too.

It’s enough to make me anxious between backups: at least with spinning rust-drives we can transplant the platters and controllers (separately, even!) while SSD hardware recovery is almost unheard of.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#46

Post by nickthegreek »

JadeNB wrote: post #39
munk-a wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welp - affordability. It's expensive and arguably less reliable to get an external hard drive.

> Welp - affordability. It's expensive and arguably less reliable to get an external hard drive. I think multiply redundant back-ups get expensive, but one external hard drive with scads of space is cheap (at least from the perspective of someone who grew up when you measured space in MB). It won't provide you the security against data failure, but it will provide some recourse for when the cloud provider yanks your…

Won’t protect you from fire or theft either.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#47

Post by 13415 »

croes wrote: post #16

How many times does that have to happen before people realize there is no cloud, only other people's computers. The data that is stored there is no longer yours, just as thanks to Apple and Co. your hardware no longer really belongs to you, but you only enjoy a temporary right of use. It will be interesting to see when hardly anything remains of an entire generation because everything comes from the cloud: Photos, vi…

We have to be able to rely on some cloud services, though, if we want georedundant backup of local files. I agree that relying on Google drive without additional backups is a bad idea, and it's generally a bad idea to store unencrypted files on cloud servers (or rely on their encryption), but the problem is more general.

It should be prohibited by law for cloud service providers to snoop around in other people's data without a warrant, no matter whether that snooping is automated or done by humans.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#48

Post by gorwell »

croes wrote: post #16

How many times does that have to happen before people realize there is no cloud, only other people's computers. The data that is stored there is no longer yours, just as thanks to Apple and Co. your hardware no longer really belongs to you, but you only enjoy a temporary right of use. It will be interesting to see when hardly anything remains of an entire generation because everything comes from the cloud: Photos, vi…

This is why I've stopped buying books on kindle. It gives Amazon the power to censor your book library, and it would not surprise me at all if we see them exercise that power soon.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#49

Post by lp0_on_fire »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #35
Ansil849 wrote: post #5

> The added grievance to this is that my drive also included my own personal family photos and my current book on the subject I mean, how many times does this need to come up for people to learn the lesson? If you are storing your data with a third party, and you do not have an iron legal contract with this third party, then that third party can and will do whatever it wants with your data, including locking you out…

Have you seen the TV ads for cloud storage services? They’re advertising themselves as being dependable. We cannot blame average consumers when events like these happen. We need to stop pretending that software, including free-as-in-beer SaaS, doesn’t have an implied warranty. It does. The implied warranty in Google Drive is that “we’ll host your files for you”. Google screwed-up (an “honest” mistake, it pains me to…

Google is well aware this is a problem and actively obfuscates ways to get connected to support (unless you pay them extra, of course) so I have a real hard time accepting this as an "honest" mistake.

Re: Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity

#50

Post by prox »

whymauri wrote: post #33
prox wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have HDDs running longer than most Google projects do. So that point is really moot.

Ditto. And when I felt it was near end-of-life, I just moved it over to a more stable SSD. I'm honestly thinking I'm going to have to backup my entire G-Drive externally and wipe it (for the security of my Google account). I mean, who knows what will trigger the deletion of your Google account these days... I guess the storage I pay for is just for e-mails.

Sounds like a plan, it’s actually cheaper in a sense. Today I saw my webhost had nextcloud one-click installs, that might be useful for those files you want accessible everywhere. I already pay for the space, so it doesn’t cost me extra.
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