
Tell HN: Amazon Cloud Drive is banning encrypted content and backup data - hedora
Got this from Amazon today.  I wonder if they&#x27;re going to refund my money.  Also, anyone know of a good alternative?<p>&gt; Dear Customer,<p>We’re writing to let you know about an upcoming change that may affect how you access your content on Amazon Drive, and to help you take steps to keep your content safe.<p>We understand that you have used Synology Cloud Sync or Hyper Backup on Synology NAS to store information on Amazon Drive.<p>Amazon will discontinue access to Amazon Drive by Synology Cloud Sync and Hyper Backup starting on November 1st, 2020. Neither application will have access to Amazon Drive after November 1st, 2020, and the only way you will be able to access your stored content will be via Amazon Drive or Amazon Photos web, desktop, and mobile apps.<p>To ensure a smooth transition, we urge all Synology Cloud Sync and Hyper Backup users to follow these steps:<p>For Photo and Video content:<p>1. If you haven’t already, download the Amazon Photos mobile or desktop app. (The mobile app is for photos and videos stored on your phone. The desktop app saves content stored on a hard drive or computer.) Or, you can use the web version by visiting: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;photos.<p>Check to see if your content includes encrypted files or special file formats. If your files are encrypted, you’ll need to save the content in a different format. More information on how to access backup and encrypted data has been provided by Synology and can be found by visiting: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sy.to&#x2F;rogvp<p>2. Upload your unencrypted content to Amazon Photos, using the apps or website.<p>... [truncated due to HN limits]
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Arubis
[https://www.synology.com/en-
us/dsm/feature/cloud_sync](https://www.synology.com/en-
us/dsm/feature/cloud_sync) lists a bunch of other backend service providers in
addition to Amazon Drive. From my experience, Backblaze is dirt cheap; I moved
all my personal backups via Arq from S3 to B2 a number of years ago.

~~~
atYevP
Yev from Backblaze here -> We're definitely a good repository for all of that
data. Happy to have you :)

~~~
mr_woozy
I always liked you guys, glad you're still doing well.

~~~
atYevP
Thanks for the kudos! We've been seeing a lot of talk about this today - I'm
glad we can be there for folks now that they need us :D

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hedora
... [rest of email]

For other files:

1\. If you haven’t already, download the Amazon Cloud Drive app. Or, you can
use the web version by visiting:
[https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive](https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive).

Check to see if your content includes encrypted files or special file formats.
If your files are encrypted, you’ll need to save the content in a different
format. More information on how to access backup and encrypted data has been
provided by Synology and can be found by visiting:
[https://sy.to/rogvp](https://sy.to/rogvp)

2\. Upload your unencrypted content to Amazon Drive, using the app or website.

After completing these steps, you’ll be able to access your content even after
access to Drive by Synology Cloud Sync and Hyper Backup are discontinued.

We understand this may be a difficult adjustment, and apologize for any
inconvenience.

Thank you, Amazon Photos and Drive team

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resoluteteeth
It doesn't seem like amazon cloud drive is banning encrypted data based on
this.

It sounds like Synology will no longer be able to back up to Amazon Cloud
Drive and so they are suggesting Amazon Photos as an alternative for
photo/video data, but Amazon Photos won't work for encrypted data.

Edit: Based on your followup comment it looks like this isn't the case, but
maybe they're actually talking about encryption performed using the existing
synology software?

~~~
hedora
[edit - put quote back in context; they repeated the part I copied verbatim
for Amazon Photos and for Amazon Cloud Drive]

> For other files:

> 1\. If you haven’t already, download the Amazon Cloud Drive app. Or, you can
> use the web version by visiting:
> [https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive](https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive).
> _Check to see if your content includes encrypted files or special file
> formats. If your files are encrypted, you’ll need to save the content in a
> different format._ ...

> 2\. Upload your unencrypted content to Amazon Drive...

~~~
ubercow13
You’ve just removed the relevant context of that quote that they were
referring to.

~~~
hedora
Thanks. Fixed.

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Arubis
@dang/mods, can this be re-titled? The original title is somewhat inflammatory
("Tell HN: Amazon Cloud Drive is banning encrypted content and backup data")
and not strictly accurate. I suspect that's why it was flagged off.

This is an understandable mistake--the OP cites an email that discusses
removing encrypted content--but that appears to have been poor communication
on Amazon's part that Drive is intended as a photo storage service, not a
generic filestore.

------
robjan
Seems like they are banning third party apps rather than encryption. It does
talk about encryption but I think it's more because the encrypted data will be
useless if your Synology NAS can no longer connect and decrypt it.

------
agentdrtran
This is becuase amazon is moving to storing photos/videos only, not arbitrary
files.

------
Hizonner
Seems like the real story is that Amazon feels like it can tell you what
software you can use to manage the storage you've bought.

------
xt00
Hmm -- I wonder the legality around banning of encrypted data storage on the
cloud (not clear if amazon is actually banning it here, but sort of smells
like it could happen).. if they ban it, the basic implication would be that
your data is somehow expected to be parsed / inspected / analyzed by some
algorithm or the government etc. Are there providers out there that have tried
to ban having encrypted data on their servers and thats considered ok in US /
EU for example?

~~~
dogma1138
I think the main reason here is cost since you can’t dedup encrypted data.

------
EricE
I can understand them wanting to limit people abusing drive to dump backups
to, but if I have an encrypted winzip file what are they going to do - delete
it? Seems a bit heavy handed, also a bit creepy that they are rummaging
through looking for content of specific types. Talk about dropping a mask.

I’ll also second Backblaze B2 - works a treat and the pricing is very
reasonable. And they actually encourage you to encrypt your content before
sending it to them :)

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advisedwang
I guess the "banning encrypted content" is coming from the instructions to
decrypt and upload unencrypted content? It sounds to me more like they are
providing these instructions because without Synology users would not have
their encryption managed anymore, and so uploading encrypted data would result
in losing the ability to access the data.

I don't see anything saying they are banning uploading, say, an encrypted ZIP
file.

------
mike503
I tried a trial of Amazon Drive (“unlimited” storage! Awesome) and realized
everything that (ab)used it was unofficial and the web UI was so hokey it was
obviously not a trustworthy solution for non media assets.

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Fire-Dragon-DoL
I ran a lot of calculations and given I had to store terabytes of data, it
ended up being cheaper to buy a server with a lot of HDD slots (I have gigabit
at home)

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gingerlime
I’m using the synology sync to back up my Amazon photos to my NAS (and then
back that up to Backblaze)... sounds like it won’t be possible any more?

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sprior
I use Glacier Backup on my Synology to back up to Amazon Glacier - will this
be affected or is it only Amazon Cloud Drive?

~~~
Arubis
Looks like only Drive. Presumably they priced Drive based on being able to de-
duplicate incoming data. Glacier is a fancy tape drive robot as a service;
they're much more concerned with access frequency than data volume.

------
mrkramer
Do other Cloud providers allow encrypted content and data?

~~~
notatoad
other cloud storage providers don't care. this appears to be a
misunderstanding though, and amazon cloud drive also doesn't care.

rather, the suggested alternative of amazon photos does not allow encrypted
data, only photo and video content. which is a totally normal restriction for
a _photo hosting service_.

~~~
hedora
HN made me cut the email in two. They've added the same restrictions to Amazon
Cloud Drive (see my other comment...)

