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Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

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Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#81

Post by peex »

iKevinShah wrote: post #75
warp_factor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this is even a remote possibility should worry everyone of the ugly monopoly that Google became. I found myself in a similar situation a couple months ago. An android App falsely charged me on the Play store. After trying to contact Google for multiple weeks I gave up and disputed the charge on my credit card. This resulted in Google coming after me for 8.99$ and threatening me to close all my Google ac…

> I decided to move everything OUT of Google Have you been successful in it? Any guidelines / tips? How hard is it?

- Custom mail with your domain or use Outlook online.

- Use Yandex Maps instead of Google Maps. It's very accurate and navigation is smooth. Way better than Gmaps imo.

- Use Office 365 instead of Google Docs.

- You can use One Drive for cloud storage or buy a cheap VPS.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#82

Post by mirimir »

londons_explore wrote: post #71
mirimir wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. But then, I suspect (as others note) that Google will notice when you have 50GB of Google Docs full of base64. Seems an iffy way to store stuff.

There's a good chance they won't. For privacy reasons, engineers can't just start peering at your files. They'd have to write a base64 detectors and automate the detection and banning of the accounts without the engineer ever seeing your files. Any bugs in that code, and they'll ban innocent people.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just set a generous limit for the number of Google Docs files? Say, 15 thousand?

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#83

Post by follower »

nemosaltat wrote: post #37

Anyone remember Gdrive? I can’t find it now, but I think it was probably early or mid 2000s. It let you store files as a local disk (FUSE) via Gmail attachments.

I do! :)

"Gdrive" (here: http://pramode.net/articles/lfy/fuse/pramode.html ) and the "Gmail Filesystem"/"GmailFS" (here: https://web.archive.org/web/20060424165737/http://richard.jo... as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) were both built on top of `libgmail` (here: http://libgmail.sourceforge.net/ ) a Python library I developed.

There were a couple of different projects at the time (listed in "Other Resources" on the project page) that sought to provide a programmatic Gmail interface.

I still have a "ftp" label in Gmail (checks notes 15 years later...) from the experimental FTP server I implemented as a libgmail example. :D

The libgmail project was probably the first project of mine which attracted significant attention including others basing their projects on it along with mentions in magazines and books which was pretty cool.

I think my favourite memory from the project was when Jon Udell wrote in a InfoWorld column ( http://jonudell.net/udell/2006-02-07-gathering-and-exchangin... ) that he considered libgmail "a third-party Gmail API that's so nicely done I consider it a work of art." It's a quality I continue to strive for in APIs/libraries I design these days. :)

(Heh, I'd forgotten he also said "I think Gmail should hire the libgmail team, make libgmail an officially supported API"--as the entirety of the "team" I appreciated the endorsement. :) )

The library saw sufficient use that it was also my first experience of trying to plot a path for maintainership transition in a Free/Libre/Open Source licensed project. I tried to strike a balance between a sense of responsibility to existing people using the project and trusting potential new maintainers enough to pass the project on to them. Looking back I felt I could've done a better job of the latter but, you know, learning experiences. :)

My experiences related to AJAX reverse engineering of Gmail (which was probably the first high profile AJAX-powered site) later led to reverse engineering of Google Maps when it was released and creating an unofficial Google Maps API before the official API was released: http://libgmail.sourceforge.net/googlemaps.html

But that's a whole other story... :)

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#84

Post by follower »

Causality1 wrote: post #23

Reminds me of the old programs that would turn your Gmail storage into a network drive by splitting everything into 25MB chunks. Utterly miserable experience with terrible latency and reliability.

Yeah, there were a couple of projects that implemented that functionality (mentioned more in my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19917018 if you're interested).

Also, "Utterly miserable experience with terrible latency and reliability." is such a great customer endorsement quote. :D

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#85

Post by follower »

mmastrac wrote: post #14
_bxg1 wrote: post #9

I had an (evil; don't do this) idea a while back to create a Dropbox-like program that stores all your data as binary chunks attached to draft emails spread across an arbitrary number of free email accounts.

This existed just after gmail launched. Can't recall the name of the program, but I played around with it to store a few hundred MB in a test account.

Yeah, there were a couple of different ones wrote a bit more about them in a comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19917018

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#86

Post by duiker101 »

iKevinShah wrote: post #75
warp_factor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this is even a remote possibility should worry everyone of the ugly monopoly that Google became. I found myself in a similar situation a couple months ago. An android App falsely charged me on the Play store. After trying to contact Google for multiple weeks I gave up and disputed the charge on my credit card. This resulted in Google coming after me for 8.99$ and threatening me to close all my Google ac…

> I decided to move everything OUT of Google Have you been successful in it? Any guidelines / tips? How hard is it?

I have been doing it for a long time, the hardest for me is all the registered users I have around the web linked to the email. After a few years of changing each one that mattered I finally get close to zero mail on gmail. Search I moved to ddg, that was the easy one. Android can work fine with just f-droid since I noticed I rarely even use the store any more and I need just a few essential apps. For storage, I tend to store only documents and I like to use mega.nz.

The only thing I haven't managed to find a even close to decent alternative it's photos. Google Photos is just simply too good. I would be even willing to pay but really, all the other apps struggle to get sync right or have some other crappy stuff that makes them barely usable.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#87

Post by fireattack »

mcbits wrote: post #72
m-p-3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would make sure to not do this in an important Google account.

I've seen a few stories of businesses and their employees all losing their Google accounts, just because the company hired a freelancer who had previously been banned, and Google detected the association. (Pretty sure they got the accounts back after some public outrage.) I wouldn't risk intentionally violating their terms if you're not quite ready to wake up one day 100% Google-free, or very good at hiding your trac…

Isn't that story debunked, if we're talking about the one coming from reddit?

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#88

Post by follower »

_bxg1 wrote: post #9

I had an (evil; don't do this) idea a while back to create a Dropbox-like program that stores all your data as binary chunks attached to draft emails spread across an arbitrary number of free email accounts.

Definitely would make an interesting learning exercise--I learned way more about SMTP/POP protocols* than I did before when I implemented demonstration SMTP/POP servers for my libgmail library before Gmail offered alternate means of access.

These days there's even the luxury of IMAP. :D

[*] About the only thing I remember now is the `HELO` and `EHLO` protocol start messages. :)

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#89

Post by dymk »

m-p-3 wrote: post #62
justinjlynn wrote: post #57

Sounds like a great way to lose your Google account (and all your other linked Google services) for ToS violations to me.

I would make sure to not do this in an important Google account.

Google can and will shut down accounts they think are ran by the same actor, even if they're not explicitly linked
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