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Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

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Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#71

Post by survirtual »

turtledove wrote: post #15
Hitton wrote: post #5

This wouldn't happen with SFTP, CVS and a $5 VPS.

What you've described is not at all an equivalent for Dropbox. There are many, many features that your stack doesn't support.

As someone who recently migrated off of Dropbox, you can get most of the features with open source systems like Syncthing and a self hosted server.

The main complication to implement is encryption at rest for the data (I use luks2 on a hd and the fs of a raspi controller) and secure remote access (wireguard works really well and is easy to manage).

I wireguard into my remote systems and have Syncthing configured only to local network (no relays etc). It works beautifully; not missing dropbox at all.

I am still working out a viable alternative for things like document scanning, but I have no regrets owning my data.

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#72

Post by padobson »

prepend wrote: post #26
jpalomaki wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the $5 VPS provider has proper backup and recovery procedures in place.

For $5 they definitely should. Also assuming the sun doesn’t end in a sudden heat death event. Also assuming that my fingers aren’t removed in a thresher accident. And assuming the provider has electricity. Etc etc etc, it’s important to vet that services I pay for have SLAs and are competent.

>Also assuming that my fingers aren’t removed in a thresher accident.

This wouldn't happen with a $5 pitchfork and a stone threshing floor

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#73

Post by Msw242 »

dangrossman wrote: post #23
taesu wrote: post #4

Are people still using dropbox? I thought other integrated service such as google drive and onedrive would have drove dropbox to the grave

700 million people use them, and 17 million are on a paid plan. I still use Dropbox, because I don't trust that I'd be able to reach a helpful human at Google should anything happen to my Google account.

Does this event shake your confidence in Dropbox's helpful humans?

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#74

Post by turtledove »

IceWreck wrote: post #32
turtledove wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you've described is not at all an equivalent for Dropbox. There are many, many features that your stack doesn't support.

Seriously, SFTP + Syncthing + Filebrowser completely replaces Dropbox for me. Name one feature thats not present in this stack.

I can install drop box in under ten minutes. I don't have to manage security patches for all the binaries in the stack. My data is available in network edge locations close to me or the people I share it with. I can turn dollars into more storage very easily. I don't have to configure user permissions and groups in more than one place.

Also, what you described is not "sftp + cvs + vps" ;D

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#75

Post by dangrossman »

Msw242 wrote: post #73
dangrossman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

700 million people use them, and 17 million are on a paid plan. I still use Dropbox, because I don't trust that I'd be able to reach a helpful human at Google should anything happen to my Google account.

Does this event shake your confidence in Dropbox's helpful humans?

Not yet, as it's just a tweet with no details about what happened after he contacted said humans, if he has.

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#78

Post by filmgirlcw »

dingleberry420 wrote: post #36
shkkmo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't your VPS provider do the same thing?

They typically don't spy on their customers as much as a service like dropbox does. Before downvoting, ask yourself: When was the last time a VPS provider scanned the disk contents of their customers? And when was the last time they booted someone for using full disk encryption? Meanwhile, dropbox proudly proclaims how they scan the contents of their users' files.

Edit: you substantially changed your comment after complaining about downvotes. That’s not cool. Note that you edited it.

VPS companies delete customer data for all kinds of reasons, just as arbitrarily as Dropbox. I’ve had VPSes at dozens and dozens of places over the years. I’ve seen them accidentally delete servers, purposefully disable stuff for what they claimed were hacked sites that weren’t actually hacked (so that’s scanning right there), I’ve seen them go out of business because the owner was 15 years old, I’ve seen them go out of business because they sold to Endurance or whoever, I’ve seen their data centers catch on fire — taking everyone’s data with it, I’ve seen them accidentally delete whole clusters.

And I excuse it in most of those cases because it is a VPS I pay a pittance for and don’t run production on, but the risk is always there. Trusting your data to Dropbox or OneDrive makes a lot more logical sense, especially if you aren’t knowingly violating any of their rules.

And yes, you can colocate. I’ve done that too. But I no longer have the energy to do that, especially if my box is in a data center I can’t physically access.

I backup about 5 different places because I’m always afraid of someone fucking me over. But for Dropbox to do this, is truly terrible. Especially for an unlisted rule.

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#80

Post by LinuxBender »

jpalomaki wrote: post #13
Hitton wrote: post #5

This wouldn't happen with SFTP, CVS and a $5 VPS.

Assuming the $5 VPS provider has proper backup and recovery procedures in place.

Many of the VPS providers have a backup option. My personal preference is to have a VM at a few different VPS providers and a cron job that uses lftp to do a rsync-like replication between VPS providers using SFTP. The advantage of lftp over rsync is that I can sync between accounts that are chroot sftp-only with nearly identical capabilities of rsync. The lftp client can also break up one file into multiple TCP streams.

In the event a provider terminates my account I could not care less. The files will be at multiple providers and HAProxy will automatically remove them when the content validation health checks fail.

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