Google Drive could soon start locking your files • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#131

Post by bshipp » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

U8dcN7vx wrote: post #91

aledalgrande wrote: post #22

Aside from legitimate DMCAs what I'm worried about is losing backupped files of any sort because some rogue individual files a complaint on stuff they don't own or because of an ML error and an inexistent customer service by Google. Also I don't really like the service to sneak onto any files I upload. What alternatives do we have for cloud file backup? I already do full backups, need something to sync files between…

You wouldn't lose the content just the ability to share it, if I read it correctly, which is something I wouldn't normally want anyway. My backups are done with restic so Google can't tell what's present since it's encrypted.

This has been my take as well.

Honestly, if you're keen to share something you shouldn't, it's pretty trivial to host it via https://rclone.org as an http server. The only person accessing it off of Google drive is the original owner and gdrive can't tell that it's being shared beyond that.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#132

Post by wodenokoto » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #85

deadalus wrote: post #6

I will never forget that the Christchurch shooting video was automatically deleted from users' PRIVATE Google Drive and Dropbox - no warnings were given and no explanation was presented.

It would have been interesting if any of those users who got their video file deleted would have been directly attached to the shooter (like an accomplice, let's say), afaik that would have meant that Google Driver and Dropbox had tampered evidence.

Google don’t delete. They make unavailable.

If a judge said that owning that video was probable cause or whatever, they could produce every user who used to have that file.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#133

Post by morpheos137 » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

Google is going to go down in history as an example of what can go wrong by using advertising (scams) to fund "free services."

The censorship is getting unbelievable.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#134

Post by bshipp » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

kurthr wrote: post #123

SavantIdiot wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other kinds of hashes besides cryptographic hashes, which tolerate differences, e.g. you can change things around and still get the same hash. This is what Apple does (or rather did) for their cloud scanner. Then there are other non-hash methods, similar to how Shazam determines a song in a noisy room. Poles, zeros, FFTs, there are many other strategies that are fault-tolerant.

Sure, but just compress and encrypt. It won't play in place, but otherwise it's nondetectable (other than by out of band timing/metadata or very rough size estimates).

...which is what floors me when Google made this statement. I thought the whole benefit of their Google drive system was deduplication of common files to minimize storage space costs. If they start tinkering with private files then people have no choice but to encrypt everything.

This will cause their storage requirement to explode. However, if the goal is only to prevent public sharing of content in contravention of the user agreement then I'm surprised it took them this long to implement this.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#135

Post by unixhero » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

Shit I got to decom that Gdrive.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#136

Post by no_time » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #120

no_time wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just installed nextcloud, an owncloud fork today. Be warned, while server side encryption works, e2e is completely broken and has been for non brand new accounts for quite a while judging by the github issues. I'm not sure how much should I trust a vps host. I can mess around with encryption all day long but they can compromise my mail server without me ever knowing.

> I'm not sure how much should I trust a vps host. I can mess around with encryption all day long but they can compromise my mail server without me ever knowing. Basically, you can't. It all depends on your threat model. edit: https://owncloud.com/features/end-to-end-encryption-2/ owncloud community and standard edition don't have e2e

Weird to think about it because some people trust VPSes with their entire business and not just their email and phone backup like I would.

The enterprise edition is out of my budget range unfortunately.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#137

Post by wly_cdgr » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

Yet another reminder to have multiple offline backups for any files you care about losing

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#138

Post by johnchristopher » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

no_time wrote: post #136

johnchristopher wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure how much should I trust a vps host. I can mess around with encryption all day long but they can compromise my mail server without me ever knowing. Basically, you can't. It all depends on your threat model. edit: https://owncloud.com/features/end-to-end-encryption-2/ owncloud community and standard edition don't have e2e

Weird to think about it because some people trust VPSes with their entire business and not just their email and phone backup like I would. The enterprise edition is out of my budget range unfortunately.

Maybe have a look at cryfs and encfs ? One of them is `optimized` for always on syncing and small chunks (can't remember which) and the other is deprecated (or a third one, can't remember at the moment).

But yeah, if you have a business... don't self host too much sensitive stuff, delegate if you can.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#139

Post by wly_cdgr » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

aledalgrande wrote: post #22

Aside from legitimate DMCAs what I'm worried about is losing backupped files of any sort because some rogue individual files a complaint on stuff they don't own or because of an ML error and an inexistent customer service by Google. Also I don't really like the service to sneak onto any files I upload. What alternatives do we have for cloud file backup? I already do full backups, need something to sync files between…

There's a fantastic gadget for syncing your files between different devices....it's called a USB stick

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#140

Post by allturtles » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

This whole story and most of the ensuing discussion seems to be based on a misconstrual of the Google blog post in question (https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/12/abuse-notifi...).

It is not announcing new content restriction policies. Those have already been in place. What's new are the user notifications:

Not new: "When a Google Drive file is identified as violating Google's Terms of Service or program policies, it may be restricted."

New: "Now, the owner of the item in Google Drive will receive an email notifying them of the action taken, and alerting them of how to request a review of the restriction if they think it is a mistake. For items in shared drives, the shared drive manager will receive the notification"