41–50 of 133 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These backups could be local or remote backups better be local AND remote.
Why? I don’t see how that is better than two or three remote backups? Do I need to change my strategy?
> I recognize that there are many different kinds of google users. Some folks [...] need maximum security. (un?)fortunately this is not exactly true. While it's true that some folks do need "extra security", the steps in discussion here are fortunately still applicable for the general population. We as a society have decided (correctly) that leaking your private photos, conversations and data is an unacceptable risk,…
> We as a society have decided (correctly) that leaking your private photos, conversations and data is an unacceptable risk, and punish the companies strongly for it. On what planet do companies get punished strongly for leaking PII? It happens to me multiple times per year and if I'm lucky I get a pittance from a class action suit years later. The executives who raked in huge bonuses cutting security don't get punis…
There's dozens of high-profile fines every year due to data mishandling from Europe, just a quick search:
> Data protection supervisory authorities across Europe have issued a total of nearly EUR1.1 billion (USD1.2 / GBP0.9 billion) in fines since 28 January 2021, according to international law firm DLA Piper.
"fined Facebook owner Meta META 265 million euros [...] for not better safeguarding more than half a billion users’ phone numbers and other information" - https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-parent-meta-fined-276-...
"European Union privacy fine related to data transfer of Facebook's EU users to U.S. servers" - https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-face-record-eu-priva...
"Luxembourg DPA issues €746 Million GDPR Fine to Amazon" https://dataprivacymanager.net/luxembourg-dpa-issues-e746-mi...
"Manx Care faces £170k fine over patient data breach" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-62590514
etc
> When her ancient iPad finally died, she tried to add the gmail account to her new replacement iPad. However, she couldn’t remember the password in order to login. There are of course no details on how exactly the iPad died, and it's possible it's been thrown away already, or that it has been remotely disabled, etc.. But I'm very sure that the iPad can be repaired, or at least that the data on the iPad can be recove…
If you get an old iPad, you can't (re)install modern apps. Apple has forced app developers to upgrade their apps, which has revoked support for older iOS versions. I ran into this over Christmas when trying to help someone who had been using an old "The New iPad" (I think the iPad 2) but had lost the charger cable. We charged it up, it powered on and reconnected back to their wifi. They had to re-sign in to Apple, bu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve (slowly) begun to make an archive of all my Google data so it will be less-awful should something ever happen. Your story scares the crap out of me because I (already) have an account that I’ll never be able to access again either - c’est la vie but it still stinks to know that a large part of my life is locked behind a metaphorical prison.
You know about Takeout, right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever tried to takeout a large amount of data across many services? Describing it as a process you do slowly is entirely fair.
For me, I just used google takeout to generate a giant 18gig zip and then I downloaded it. I do that once a year. It takes a long time to download, but it’s actually fairly quick and I wouldn’t describe it as a slow process.
Google is attempting to migrate my account to Passkeys, which doesn't work at all for me. Despite spending significant time trying to get it to work I cannot get a passkey that works on my iOS device, and without it it seems impossible. And yet Google keeps trying to log me in using it.
The prompts went away when I explicitly removed it as a sign in option.
I also had to explicitly disable "skip password when possible".
> They’ve all basically hit the brick wall of Google suggesting that at their scale, nothing can be done about such “edge” cases. The thing is that at scale your “edge” cases are still millions of people. Companies love the benefits that come from scale, like having a billion people use their service, but they never seem to be capable of handling the other parts that come with it :(
When Google was first starting, savvy techies were aware of aggressive sociopath companies (e.g., Microsoft), and also that Google would probably be very powerful. Maybe Google had some of that savvy and that's why they instituted "Don't Be Evil". With all the supposedly smart people and resources that Google has, you'd think they could somehow figure out how not to be the cause of marginalizing people while dismissi…