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Dumped by Google

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Re: Dumped by Google

#131

Post by grey-area »

svachalek wrote: post #39
capo wrote: post #3

Same as every other “cloud provider”, yet somehow Google is the one subjected to these overwritten accounts and the almost mandatory pseudo law/policy musings that follow. You might want to take a look at some policies from others in the industry to get a more accurate picture of this landscape. These policies are constructed as such to mitigate litigation, which the author concedes. Regardless I'm glad this instance…

"Somehow"? What other "cloud provider" does John or Jane Q. Public use?

Apple iCloud, MS Live, Amazon Kindle Libraries, Dropbox.

All of these widely used and are subject to loss of service, arbitrary account shutdown, data loss, and data theft. None of them are really trustworthy, particularly not as a primary data store, so I find it odd that the commenter rants about Google - the problem is trusting any corporation with control over your data.

The interests of a corporation and an individual are not likely to coincide in the long term. Google is not evil, they're just a corporation like any other.

Re: Dumped by Google

#132

Post by eloisant »

blantonl wrote: post #46
svachalek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Somehow"? What other "cloud provider" does John or Jane Q. Public use?

I don't think his comment was focused on John or Jane Q Public, but rather the general use of cloud services and the dangers of these types of events happening. For instance, I host most of my business on AWS. We recently had a compromised server that delivered malware to some of our Web visitors resulting in Google completely blacklisting our site, and ultimately resulting in AWS sending us a threatening notificatio…

Well, the Amazon approach is much better than the Google approach. At least they sent a notice, while Google's policy is "shoot first, discuss later". Well actually the first part, I'm not sure if there is a second part.

Re: Dumped by Google

#133

Post by eloisant »

ubersync wrote: post #121
sneak wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail and Yahoo Mail and Facebook Mail and my personal mail server all stand in contradiction to your claim. Stop making things up just because you want to complain about the Google. Nobody will fault you for a simple "Fuck Google, they're demonstrably evil and have access to way too much data now," which is what it seems to me you're driving toward.

What are you even talking about! How are Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Facebook email decentralized? And what part of my comment prompted you to believe that it was a "Fuck Google" statement?

Email is decentralized because Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and whatever server you can setup can talk together. You don't have to use Gmail to send an email to a Gmail user.

The only thing that's threatening email decentralization is the war on spam. It's becoming more and more difficult to send messages that don't go directly to spam boxes if you're not one of the big player.

Re: Dumped by Google

#134

Post by eloisant »

josscrowcroft wrote: post #72

"Services I'd Pay For", May 2013 Edition: 1) A hands-off, hassle-free service that connects to all your Google 'properties' and backs up everything every hour, on the hour, and allows easy importing into a selection of similar replacement services if/when the Googleplex smites me down. 2) See 1).

* Buy a Synology NAS * Buy a domain name * Setup a mail server on your NAS (you get Roundcube in 2 clicks) * Forward emails from gmail to your home email * Backup to Amazon Glacier (in a few clicks on a Synology)

Now when a problem arise, just stop using GMail and use Roundcube directly.

Re: Dumped by Google

#135

Post by karma_fountain »

taf2 wrote: post #85
ceph_ wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a really wild accusation to me. Is their anything to back this up besides their speculation?

I know our consulting company for 2 years kept a sheet of logins as do most agencies so I find that hard to believe... However, I do recall getting my Adsense account banned for click fraud - which really sucked but it was true that I had my friends all click my ads and that my site was basically just ripping off pop culture content with naive hopes of getting rich quick - ah the 200's. so no suprise it got banned.

That wasn't popjam was it?

Re: Dumped by Google

#136

Post by drchaos »

kybernetyk wrote: post #127
robomartin wrote: post #117

Seriously, why does ANYONE use anything other than Google Search and Analytics? Why do you willfully choose to expose yourself and your business to what they can do to you? From the article: "A few minutes into my Google-less existence, I realized how dependent I had become. I couldn’t finish my work or my taxes, because my notes and expenses were stored in Google Drive, and I didn’t know what else I should work on b…

Can you suggest a viable alternative to Google Mail? I'm feeling uncomfortable having all my mail in Google's hands but haven't found an alternative yet.

Dovecot + Roundcube hosted on a cheap VPS, with Thunderbird (on the Desktop) and K9Mail (on Android) as client works pretty well for me. Dovecot 2.2 implements several new IMAP extensions, so you can do serverside fulltext search, threading and push of incoming mail, and with some work[1] it should also be possible to sync your contacts and even a calendar with your server (I must admit though that I haven't tried that yet).

The only thing left to be desired is support for tagging in Roundcube. Thunderbird has it, but it would be nice to have it in the web interface, too. There's a ticket for it in the Roundcube tracker[2] but it doesn't seem to receive much attention yet.

Personally I hope that with the recent closures of Google services more people choose to run their own services with free/open source software. With VPSes and modern tools this is cheaper and easier than ever, and if we want the web to remain free and open, it's much better to have some diversity and decentralization, instead of placing everything in the hands of Google and Facebook.

[1] https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/389 [2] http://trac.roundcube.net/ticket/1485799

Re: Dumped by Google

#137

Post by oulipo »

kybernetyk wrote: post #127
robomartin wrote: post #117

Seriously, why does ANYONE use anything other than Google Search and Analytics? Why do you willfully choose to expose yourself and your business to what they can do to you? From the article: "A few minutes into my Google-less existence, I realized how dependent I had become. I couldn’t finish my work or my taxes, because my notes and expenses were stored in Google Drive, and I didn’t know what else I should work on b…

Can you suggest a viable alternative to Google Mail? I'm feeling uncomfortable having all my mail in Google's hands but haven't found an alternative yet.

Start by simply backing up your emails regularly with BaGoMa

Re: Dumped by Google

#138

Post by oulipo »

trhtrsh wrote: post #40
coderdude wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately though, it's poor practice to let a user change their email address without first sending a confirmation email. If you don't confirm the action before making the change then bad people can lock out the true owner of an account simply by being logged-in.

Which is why everyone should have their own domain name, or have a contract with a reputable provider. It's crazy to cede over ones entire identity to a free "best-effort" service.

The problem is that by all measures, Google is the most reputable provider... of course there are some problematic stories from time to time, but they probably happen also with paid providers, just that you don't hear from them so often because there are less people using paid providers! :)

Re: Dumped by Google

#139

Post by mokash »

I think we need a paid email provider, someone who's sole business is to provide email services, and maybe a calendar. Someone who you can host your own domain with and someone who's mission it is to ensure their customers have privacy, security and can rely on their services. Someone who doesn't just guarantee their services for as much as you pay for them but someone who is willing to put their ass on the line to prove that they're a good provider.

Sure, you could just set up your own email server but why go through the hassle? There's a real opportunity here, my mother doesn't know how to set up her own email provider, neither does my aunt. A good email provider will make it really easy to do everything related to email with advanced spam filtering capabilities and will run a very tight ship.

A man can dream.

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