
Watch what you store on SkyDrive–you may lose your Microsoft life - yread
http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-may-lose-your-microsoft-life/
======
rickmb
So Microsoft is peeking into private folders, and judging the contents based
on political and religious values not inscribed in any law? And completely
terminates all Microsoft service to anyone found wanting to obey by these
fundamentalist directives?

The warning should not be "watch what you store on SkyDrive", the warning
should be "stay the hell away from Microsoft".

~~~
shabda
From the code of conduct.: [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-
live/code-of-cond...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-live/code-of-
conduct)

> provides or creates links to external sites that violate this Code of
> Conduct.

Along with

> depicts nudity of any sort including full or partial human nudity or nudity
> in non-human forms such as cartoons, fantasy art or manga.

So linking to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturism> would be enough to get
banned, no?

~~~
einhverfr
"nudity in non-human forms"

Does that mean that in photos, chimps must wear clothes?

~~~
politician
It probably means "flesh tones that our CV algorithms would flag as illicit"
-- that is, they are probably prohibiting you from storing images that would
create false positives.

~~~
einhverfr
To be honest, I think these clauses are broadly worded so they can suspend
anyone's account and come up with a justification after the fact.

Note the prohibition of _advocating pornography_ and _expressing hatred._

~~~
tluyben2
Why don't they just put: "We can ban your account without prior notice for any
reason we see fit."

Tons of services have that.

------
Spooky23
This is like a hotel manager kicking you out because you and your partner are
having sex. Why? Because prostitutes have sex too, and we don't want our hotel
associated with that.

There are other, more troubling things here too. Materials related to the sale
of firearms and ammunition are prohibited. Firearms in various forms are
completely legal to own and trade to various degrees in the United States, why
are documents relating to that trade of firearms banned?

I also see that anything that incites, advocates or expresses profanity is
prohibited. I would advocate that all SkyDrive users place a copy of the terms
of service in their account. This should incite most people to express their
opinion of Microsoft's actions by saying "Fuck you, Microsoft", and thus
violating the terms of service.

~~~
delinka
I agree with your analogy. I don't understand your last two sentences. I don't
get how advocating users placing copies of the ToS in their accounts incites
people to express their opinions with a "fuck you, MS."

~~~
Spooky23
I guess I fumbled the satirical point that I was trying to make.

Most folks don't read terms of service documents. But, putting this particular
terms of service document on your SkyDrive and reading it would incite many
people to express their opinion of the document using profanity. (It certainly
had that effect on me ;) )

------
philjohn
The most disturbing thing here is that Microsoft are routinely looking at
peoples private data to monitor it. Whether this takes the form of an
automated program to flag things up, there's still going to be a human
arbitrating the final decision.

That's just creepy.

~~~
bborud
Give it a few years and people will get used to it and come to accept it.

Just look at air travel. It took just a decade to get people to accept having
their genitals touched by people in uniform before getting on airplanes.

There will be some very, very minor outrage initially, and then that will
subside and people will obediently adapt. Some will even claim that it is your
patriotic duty to accept it.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I don't think that's a good analogy though. People feel peer pressure to
accept the humiliation of the TSA because it is for our "safety." When it
comes to long term storage of our privates, I think there will be a different
attitude.

~~~
bborud
No, people pretty much have exactly the same sort of attitude: "I have nothing
to hide so this doesn't concern me". Just wait and see.

------
omh
Welcome to the cloud.

If you work or play in space owned by someone else (Google, Microsoft, Amazon,
whoever) then you have to realise that they can do almost anything they want.
If this starts happening too regularly then consumers might start to rethink
the benefits of cloud-based systems for running large parts of their lives.

~~~
nestlequ1k
Painting way too broad a brush stroke. Just because an idiotic corporation has
no idea how to administer their cloud products doesn't mean they are all bad.
I've been using dropbox for years and I've never heard of anyone anywhere
having their account shut down for having a nude photo.

In fact, I know there's tons of pirated content on dropbox because when I add
a pirated movie, 9 times out of 10 it get's synced immediately. That means
that file exists there already and they can identify it via MD5 hash. They
could have banned it based on some sort of blacklist, but they didn't.

Probably because they understand that if they did, they would piss their
paying customers off. So why spend effort trying to do that?

~~~
mtgx
Wasn't Dropbox involved in a pretty big privacy scandal a year or two ago when
people found out they weren't encrypting their files properly or something?

~~~
kmfrk
I believe Dropbox create a hash for all users' files that point to a single
file hosted on Dropbox, so Dropbox save the space that would have been
occupied by the - according to them - redundant files. You could say that a
Dropbox repo is like a list of references to non-redundant files hosted by
Dropbox.

In finding any disagreeable content, I believe the implication was that
Dropbox could map it the other way around from the infracting file to a list
of users with the file's hash.

------
bobsy
I don't think Microsoft know what they doing. All cloud storage providers need
a policy similar to what Microsoft have. They cannot have pirated content,
child porn etc on their servers.

This rule should be strictly enforced on public folders. On private folders
Microsoft shouldn't even be looking. While you should not be allowed to store
"bad" content, it shouldn't be enforced on private folders unless there is
some from of legal request.

I don't understand why they think it should work any different. Skydrive
should be a way to back up files. You cannot back up your files if someone is
snooping on them or if your account is banned for accidentally including that
risky photo of your wife in the back up folder...

But fine. Whatever. Microsoft want to make their service unusable. Why are
they then banning the entire live account? Suspending people from XBOX live
and prohibiting them from using app purchases? If they are suspending the
account the account holder needs to be refunded. Why don't they just prohibit
the account from using SkyDrive?

Microsoft have been getting better recently. On this though they seem to have
completely lost the plot.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I disagree. All cloud storage providers should have similar policies and
should enforce them ruthlessly. Maybe then, people will take client side
encryption seriously.

~~~
markokocic
Does anyone know of any cloud storage with client side encryption that is
convenient to use? I'm using Wuala, but would like to hear about alternatives.

~~~
trekkin
SpiderOak (most similar to _drive, dropbox), Tarsnap (_ nix-only, have to
compile it yourself), aes.io (browser-based, like box.com)

------
robgough
The problem here for me is not so much that MS found an image they didn't like
and then over-reacted (which I rather think they did). It's that they have
obviously written tooling specifically with the purpose of finding these
things, and then shutting down accounts.

That they think it's OK to routinely look at these files, where I think most
consumers would have a reasonable expectation of privacy, highlights to me an
extremely scary though process.

~~~
mtgx
Indeed. Remember when the tech blogs made a big deal about Google Drive's
privacy policy because of the wording, and saying how Skydrive has a bit
better wording? Well it seems in the end it was Microsoft that was using
actual people to look at private files, while Google just wanted to scan them
automatically using algorithms for different stuff.

------
DanBC
Most of those are, IMO, reasonable requests.

> _contains or could be considered ‘junk mail’, ‘spam’, ‘chain letters’,
> ‘pyramid schemes’, ‘affiliate marketing’ or unsolicited commercial
> advertisement._

The amount of spam I used to get that was "Send this to 5 other people or bad
things will happen" was amazing, and it'd be a shame if they were banning
people who were storing all their email.

> _depicts nudity of any sort including full or partial human nudity or nudity
> in non-human forms such as cartoons, fantasy art or manga._

This is baffling. I can make a guess at what nude means - "a naked human, or a
human with breasts or genitals on display." But I'm lost at partial human
nudity. Is a man with shoes, socks, trousers, and an unbuttoned shirt clothed,
or partially nude? What about if he takes his shirt off? What if he's a slob,
or if he's like the guy in the diet coke ad? What if the image is a woman in a
long t-shirt (with non-visible underwear).

I understand the need for wriggle-room with these types of rules, but they
need to make this a bit clearer to avoid regular photos being banned.

<[http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1502278/&#...](http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1502278/>);

I don't understand why MS don't allow you to migrate your stuff out of their
service. This guy appears to have lost a lot of stuff. He was a dedicated MS
user - he even had a Win7 phone (now useless) - but he isn't anymore.

~~~
shrikant
What is even more baffling is the bit just preceding that at the top of that
section [1] that says:

 _You will not upload, post, transmit, transfer, distribute or facilitate
distribution of any content (including text, images, sound, video, data,
information or software) [...]_

 _Text_?! Well, that rules out backing up e-book collections there.

To be fair, I don't think Microsoft are that out of touch with reality that
they truly believe nobody will use their Skydrive to back up their porn stash
or, uh, erotic literature. I also doubt they will police content to that
extent, and they're just doing a CYA with these over-broad terms and
conditions.

As an aside: for some reason, this reminds me of a question I had to answer
when filling out a UK visa application (paraphrasing) -- "Have you even been
involved in any terrorist acts?"

[1] [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-live/code-of-
cond...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-live/code-of-conduct)

------
chris_wot
Guess I won't be using SkyDrive then. Not because I store naked pictures (I
don't!), but because they shouldn't be looking at what I'm storing on the
drive!

This is my _private_ data.

~~~
namidark
Then you should host it on _your_ private cloud.

PS: owncloud.org

~~~
pwny
Thanks for making me discover owncloud! The only sad thing is that it uses
server-side encryption, which I don't trust even if I own the server :(

However, through the power and sheer awesomeness of open source, I might try
to get my hands dirty at implementing client-side encryption sometime. The
rest of the software looks perfect and I have a couple Linux boxes just
begging to be used :)

------
mtgx
Why should the cloud storage providers care what you store in your account,
especially if it's all private? This sets a dangerous precedent. Imagine if
Gmail didn't allow you to send "certain" images to someone else.

I think if they keep doing this, either Microsoft or any other cloud storage
provider, it will be a huge drawback in trying to convince people to store
their files in there instead of their own their own devices. This is something
we'll all worried about before cloud storage services took off, and now that
worry is turning into reality.

~~~
omh
_Imagine if Gmail didn't allow you to send "certain" images to someone else._

From the Gmail policies (at
[https://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/program_policies.h...](https://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/program_policies.html))
:

    
    
      users may not:
      Send, upload, distribute or disseminate or offer to do the same with respect to any unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, fraudulent, infringing, obscene, or otherwise objectionable content

~~~
Achshar
They have this policy in place but there is a difference between having a
policy and actively enforcing it.

~~~
Semaphor
Not related to them wanting to do it / enforcing it, they might be required to
have that in there for legal reasons.

------
ldehaan
This is why I use clients that do client side encryption. The data is
encrypted on your local machine; usually compressed and then sent off to the
cloud. The key is stored on your machine and there is no easy way for them to
see the data you have stored. I used to use Jungledisk but switched to
SpiderOak because the Linux client is much better. There really isn't much of
a drawback other than you must never forget your password :) if you do you are
pretty much out of luck.

~~~
msh
I liked spideroak, but the client was exteemely slow on a core2dou mac with
backup datasets larger than 50gig.

~~~
ldehaan
I've no idea about the performance on mac, however if you haven't tried it out
in the past couple of months they have really done some great updates to the
clients. As far as slow with large datasets I have about 400GB (compressed
down to ~300) that I am backing up, with regular additions on a daily basis.
Some releases have been pretty sucky, but it keeps getting better, I would
highly recommend them to anyone.

------
einhverfr
From the Terms of Service:

"incites, _advocates,_ or expresses pornography, obscenity, vulgarity,
profanity, hatred, bigotry, racism, or gratuitous violence. "

Wow, not only is it impermissible to upload pornography but apparently it is
impermissible to talk about it too.... Nor can one _express_ hatred of an ex
or even say that there are times when hating another person or even an idea is
beneficial!

Way to go Microsoft!

I _HATE_ Neo-Nazis! Good thing I am not posting a document that says _that_ to
Skydrive!

------
s_henry_paulson
Hmm, curious. The first guy that contacted Microsoft was told what the problem
was, and given an opportunity to fix the problem.

This next guy doesn't seem to have been given an opportunity to fix the
problem.

Perhaps just an untrained employee, or lack of a proper procedure in place by
Microsoft.

Regardless, the fallout from this is likely to be quite large, as the entire
reason for putting your data in the "cloud" is that you trust that you'll be
able to access it.

~~~
DanBC
> _[...] the entire reason for putting your data in the "cloud" is that you
> trust that you'll be able to access it._

I agree that many people think this. But I cannot understand why they think
it. I hear people talk about "cloud backups", when the only copy they have of
a file is the one in the cloud.

~~~
sp332
Access doesn't mean backup. If I have a document in Google Docs only, I can
access that from anywhere with an internet connection. If I'm talking about a
cloud backup, I mean e.g. Dropbox where I have more than one copy.

~~~
DanBC
But even then, I can't understand why people think that SERVICE X is always
on.

Obviously there's a few people who know the up times and down times and make
an informed choice.

But many people just assume that it will always work, and who will suffer when
that service is not available.

Maybe my early experience of batch processing and unreliable utility supplies
and a few experiences of dropped services has taught me, and that other people
are living in a world with remarkably good up times and thus don't get the
chance to learn that three nines is not six nines.

------
nestlequ1k
Wow, this is insane. Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot here.
Guidelines like this are a dealkiller for just about everyone. Even people who
have no intention of putting questionable content on their drive will recoil
on the mere idea that Microsoft is monitoring their private files.

Big F up, but what's new with MS these days.

------
etfb
This made me go check the terms and conditions for DropBox, and they're much
better. The closest they come is saying you may not "publish or share
materials that are unlawfully pornographic or indecent, or that advocate
bigotry, religious, racial or ethnic hatred". That's a whole lot different to
Microsoft's banning of any kind of porn, lawful or otherwise, even when it's
not published or shared.

~~~
mmagin
The latter clause is awfully broad and subjective. If someone put in their
Dropbox account pictures of say, artifacts of the Nazi regime, would that be
violating the rules? It's not at all clear that that would be advocating
bigotry, religious, racial or ethnic hatred on the part of the user
themselves, but it clearly was related to historical political movements which
did so.

~~~
etfb
The key is the verb "publish". Putting it in your Dropbox account !=
publishing it.

------
ralfn
So, technically and appearantly practically, you cant privately store a
picture of yourself being born.

Seriously, when did it suddenly become okay for companies to police our
culture?

Imagine cars breaking down because you used it to drive to known bad
neigbourhood?

Imagine dinner plates that break down because you out meat on them?

Imagine fruit juice that evaporates if you mix it with alcohol?

Why is Microsoft targetting the amish people? It does not make economic sense.

------
arihant
One obvious way to handle this on private folders is client side encryption.
Companies need to be protected, and users need privacy. This seems win-win. If
an agency need to look in private folder, they must go through user - and that
would at least have legal recourse.

~~~
Woost
There is, actually, a loss to the provider. Every person's version of pirated
movie X will be unique, which means the provider has to pay for more storage
space than they would without encryption. (since without encryption they could
compute a hash of the file and point to it on their servers)

------
conradfr
I think there is a problem with these accounts that encapsulate a lot of
different services that need to be addressed.

I had my Youtube account suspended and that subsequently banned me from my
Gmail, Docs etc. You feel vulnerable.

Maybe some kind of policy that forced the provider to at least block you only
for a specific service ?

------
rbanffy
When it comes to Microsoft, I always wonder whether it's just incompetence or
a very clever attempt to discredit the whole cloud idea that threatens their
cash cows (that are based on the rather outdated concept of local software and
data).

BTW, this is the creepiest "GMail Man" variant ever.

~~~
hexagonc
This is unlikely, since Microsoft has put a lot of money and marketing behind
their own cloud offering, Azure. It also is inconsistent with everything that
they are trying to do with Office360.

------
zmmmmm
The really interesting angle to this is that (apparently) Windows 8 and the
next version of office are going to _default_ to storing a lot of stuff in
Skydrive. So unless you actively try to store stuff locally it is going up to
the cloud. It will be very interesting to watch what happens as a tidal wave
of (intended to be) private porn hits Skydrive and consumers get their
accounts banned en masse.

Like others, I think MS is in a dead end street here. There is stuff that they
just can't allow - harboring child porn is illegal regardless of whether
you're storing it for someone else, etc. But if they don't default content
into Skydrive then hardly anybody will use it and people will keep assuming
Google Docs and other cloud services are just "better" for collaboration. The
only way out is client side encryption, but that disables many server side
functions (eg: search) and gets god-awful complex for sharing between parties.

------
zxoq
This is why I prefer services to be with different providers. Having storage
with dropbox, mail with gmail, phone with Apple etc. etc. means one service
dying won't kill your entire online persona. While if you use G-drive, gmail,
android phone, Google everything like they want you're basically screwed if
you violate the TOS of any service.

~~~
valdiorn
This is especially bad when you lose money. As stated in the article, he lost
apps that he had bought and paid for! This is a very gray area, and the fact
that a software company can put arbitrary rules for one of its services that
affect your assets in another domain, assets you paid for, is possible
illegal.

Think about what happened if you went to Wal-Mart and purchased clothes and
other items there. Then, two years later, you cause an incident at Wal-Mart
and you are banned from their store. Does that give Wal-Mart the right to come
to your house and burn everything you previously bought at their store???

------
kmfrk
Reminds me of the people who lose access to Gmail, because they violate some
completely arbitrary rule on Google+.

I can't believe companies do so much to deter people from their cloud
services. That'd be like Apple shutting down the iTunes and iCloud of a
developer, who hacked around in iOS. I hope that has yet to happen.

------
msh
Windows Phone got a feature to auto upload all the photos you take on the
phone to skydrive, I would imagine a lot of people would run foul of these
rules...

------
gbraad
I read the Dutch thread on Tweakers.net related to the suspesion of
WingsOfFury. This was done because of a favorites folder which contained links
to inappropriate material. So, in effect, making a backup of your links can
lead to a blockage/suspension?!?!?!

------
iso-8859-1
Is nudity allowed on other platforms? Dropbox? Google Drive?

~~~
unimpressive
Google uses one generic TOS, I haven't found an Acceptable Use Policy, the TOS
doesn't seem to mention it.:

<https://www.google.com/intl/en_US/policies/terms/>

EDIT: Found it.
[https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148505&topic=2463295&ctx=topic)

 _"Don’t publish sexually explicit images or videos, such as those with nudity
or graphic sex acts. Writing about adult topics is permitted as long as they
aren't accompanied by sexually explicit images or videos, or any material that
promotes or depicts unlawful or inappropriate sexual acts with children or
animals. Additionally, we don't allow content that drives traffic to
commercial pornography."_

\------------------------------------------------------------

Dropbox TOS don't seem to specifically mention it, they're Acceptable Use
Policy notes that "unlawfully pornographic" and "indecent" material is not
allowed:

<https://www.dropbox.com/terms>

<https://www.dropbox.com/acceptable_use>

 _"You agree not to misuse the Dropbox services. For example, you must not,
and must not attempt to, use the services to do the following
things....publish or share materials that are unlawfully pornographic or
indecent, or that advocate bigotry, religious, racial or ethnic hatred;"_

~~~
omh
Google drive also includes a link to their Program Policies:
[https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148505)

This prohibits publishing "Violence", "Hate speech" and "Sexually explicit
material", amongst other things. I'd guess it was written with more public
publishing in mind, so it's not clear whether it's intended to include purely
personal content on Google Drive.

~~~
unimpressive
I actually edited that in a few minutes ago.

And I was thinking the same thing as I read it, when they say "publish" do
they mean make publicly available or store?

I also wonder if the Dropbox AUP just adds "indecent" to the "unlawfully
pornographic" statement, or means that they prohibit all indecent exposure.

And that word "publish" shows up again.

~~~
jeltz
My guess is that publish must refer to making something public. That is the
only sensible explanation.

------
zhwang
I'm not surprised at all. If I recall correctly, there was a link posted a
while back about someone breaking some condition in the Google TOS, and thus
being locked out of their Google Account, and therefore all their email,
documents, and so on.

And that's why I'm trying to make sure I don't become too dependent on any one
"cloud" ecosystem.

------
pragmatic
> depicts nudity of any sort including full or partial human nudity or nudity
> in non-human forms such as cartoons, fantasy art or manga.

What about pictures of your kids? Anyone who has kids has the ubiquitous first
bath, bathtub hijinks pictures of small children.

Where does this cross the line into child pr0n? What if you catch a "private"
part by accident in the frame?

These are _not_ for public consumption but may appear on private cloud storage
due to backups, etc.

This is a large issue as more and more companies are backing your stuff up in
the cloud. You as a consumer may not even realize where your _private_ content
is going.

------
ekiara
Since SkyDrive no longer has a restricted list of filetypes allowed for
upload. How hard would it be to only upload encrypted files?

A neat solution would be a client side utility that encrypts local files (or
entire folders/tarballs) with gpg, generates checksums, splits them into
2048KB or 1024KB chunks and uploads those to SkyDrive. The downside is that
there would have to be some sort of management/database locally (and on every
machine you wanted to download the files to) that would keep track of which
chunks make up which file and rebuilds everything when you download them.

------
garrym
One of the reasons you should use personal cloud offerings like Tonido
(<http://www.tonido.com>) instead of public online cloud services.

Disclaimer: I work for Tonido.

------
draakon
Hmm... I don't fully understand following sentence from Microsoft Services
Agreement ( [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/microsoft-
se...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/microsoft-service-
agreement) ):

> We also don't control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others
> make available on the service.

Isn't scanning my private content for nudity a verifying? Or what does it mean
in this context.

------
mquinlan
I've actually had this happen to me a few months ago; I tried to sign in and
my account was locked due to some private pictures I had stored. I decided to
just wait out the the "grace period" they gave me. When I checked back a few
weeks later, my account was left unchanged. I hadn't even contacted support,
so I'm curious as to why my situation was any different. As far as I can tell,
all charges were dropped.

------
ginko
It's things like that why I believe that cloud computing and Web 2.0 are a bad
idea.

Data and processing power should belong to the user and not corporations.

------
pjmlp
This is what happens when you rely on the "cloud" for private data.

Private data is at home, or in backups stored in the bank, not at someone else
network.

------
alan_cx
This makes me so angry, and I should know better.

Sorry, why are people falling for the cloud? The whole thing is absurd. We had
all our data nice and safe, we could make it accessible across the net, and it
was complete in our control. Then some one came up with a new trendy way of
ruining all that. Now, for some reason I am yet to understand, we give control
of our data, data being the most precious thing in IT since you cant go out
and buy a replacement, to bible bashing, moralistic, judgemental, board
meetings in big corporations.

HELLO?????????

This is the biggest kings new clothes situation since Satan knows when.

Guys, you know how this works. Stop marching in towards the edge of the cliff.
Its is no use bleating on and on about privacy etc, when almost every one is
buying in the the cloud regime. When the hell did these companies ever respect
your privacy and right to your own morality. You know they don't. Yet ever
single time this sort of issues crops up there is almost utter surprise. Its
like watching a woman being beaten up for the 100th time by her psycho
husband.

Please, the king has no clothes. None. Secure you own data your way.

Thanks for the rant space.

------
CamperBob2
From the list of prohibitions: "...is illegal or violates _any_ applicable
local and national laws"

So a photo of any woman not wearing a burkha, if placed in my private SkyDrive
folder, can result in the loss of my Hotmail and Xbox Live accounts.

Wow. What kind of idiot would do business with these people?!

------
dinkumthinkum
You mean the Cloud is not the panacea for online life that everyone acts like
it is? You mean there's a reason you may not want to ditch having your own
storage hardware in favor of "all cloud all the time." huh.

Seriously, why would anyone use this service. No profanity?

~~~
icebraining
_why would anyone use this service_

Because we can stick truecrypt containers in it? Not that I use it personally,
I prefer Tarsnap.

------
jasonhanley
Trusting Microsoft with cloud storage is akin to using Hotmail for email. It's
unthinkable for anyone with technical knowledge, but often the only option
that non-techies are aware of. The best we can do is educate others to use
something sensible.

~~~
KeyBoardG
"It's unthinkable for anyone with technical knowledge"

Email is email... Don't let your hatred for companies run your life.

------
malloc
Ideally, client side encryption might be a good solution for this. From what
I've seen, there isn't a public API to work with skydive. Even some open-
source efforts are mostly outdated by now. Maybe that could be something worth
looking?

------
jakeonthemove
Damn, I've been using SkyDrive to store OneNote notebooks for easy sharing and
editing. Never thought they actually check private folders - yet another
reason to never store any sensitive or important information in the cloud...

------
at-fates-hands
I've been using the a Windows 7 phone and Skydrive is part of the deal. I
haven't uploaded a lot of photos, but to find out they're going through my
stuff makes me feel pretty uneasy.

Glad I'm going back to my Android based phone this weekend.

------
D9u
The OP is "wmpowerusers.com" (Windoze Mobile Power Users) yet the site doesn't
even scale to my mobile device?

Someone needs to clue in on "viewport" either in meta or CSS.

That said, I don't see this as a newsworthy item. It's more of a crybaby
thing.

------
corford
The only cloud based personal data storage company I trust, use and recommend
to my friends is SpiderOak: Easy to use client, gobs of storage and it's
absolutely impossible for them to see your data.

------
vipervpn
I guess I'm in the minority to side with Microsoft on this one. Look, the guy
uploaded nudes, maybe it was even porn. He violated the rules. This isn't
censorship, it's not creepy, it's the rules.

~~~
alan_cx
"Maybe".

------
tlogan
The problem is here is that they are peeking into private folders. So if their
algorithm gets 'positive' my private folder will get scanned by some employee.
That is just creepy - really creepy.

------
Numberwang
I really like the practicality of my G-Drive, but these things scare me. What
do you recommend for permanent online access and backup of your data? Do you
encrypt your private photos etc?

~~~
iso-8859-1
We've been over this so many times... Backup != Dropbox and the like.

 _Ask HN: What's your favorite online-backup tool?_ :
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1946416>

See this thread from a week ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4224518>

In short:

 _If you are a hacker or care about security and have money_ : SpiderOak or
Tarsnap

 _Source code_ : Git

 _If you are poor and care about security_ : Dropbox with TrueCrypt (be
careful that you don't mount simultaneously)

 _None of the above and lazy_ : Dropbox vanilla (better terms, non-evil non-
giant company)

~~~
maayank
"Dropbox with TrueCrypt (be careful that you don't mount simultaneously)"

What scenario do you refer to? Why would it be bad to run a non-paused Dropbox
client and mount a TrueCrypt volume inside it at the same time?

~~~
barik
I'm starting to suspect that the people who keep recommending TrueCrypt for
day-to-day usage on Dropbox fall into the camp of "Do as I say, not as I do."
Because if they are actually using TC the way they suggest, they might as well
use FTP.

First, I created a small 64 MB TrueCrypt partition. I then mounted the
partition in TC. I noticed immediately that the tc file has an exclusive lock,
so any changes in your TC partition will never be synced until the partition
is unmounted! If your use case is to mount your partition immediately upon
login, work for the day, and then shutdown, Dropbox will never have an
opportunity to sync your partition.

My next test was to mount the TC partition simultaneously (Desktop and
Laptop). Then I run into conflicts, as another posted mentioned. Because of
the exclusive file lock, if you mount simultaneously on two machines, you will
start getting duplicate -conflict files when unmounting either of the
partitions, since the other is still locked. It's not immediately clear from
examination which TC partition is actually the most recent one. And may Gods
have mercy on you if at any time you edit both partitions before they sync.

Even if you're willing to live with these annoyances, there is now the trade-
off of which partition size to create. Too large of a partition and syncing
can take a long time, even if you make minimal file changes (because of
chaining, there is not a 1 bit -> 1 bit change in TC partitions). Too small of
a partition, and you'll have to keep resizing it or creating new ones. What a
hassle.

The only use case which seems to work well for me, is for minimally modified
files, like for annual tax returns. Here, a TrueCrypt container makes sense
and works quite well because the partition is basically read-only and unlikely
to be simultaneously or even regularly mounted.

So for those people who keep suggesting TrueCrypt, I'm curious, do you
actually use it, and if so, how? The suggestions for file-level encryption
(encfs) appear to be much more sane.

~~~
maayank
Thank you for the detailed review!

Indeed, it seems like one of those problems where solutions seem obvious (use
TrueCrypt!) until you experiment or think about it more deeply.

------
mariuolo
I recall google doing something like that after introducing G+.

------
delinka
So why aren't you encrypting everything you stick in The Cloud?

------
KeyBoardG
TL:DR Everything you put on the internet is transparent. If you want something
private, encrypt or keep it to yourself.

------
vsviridov
Swiss banks should start offering cloud storage. 'Cause then we'd be somewhat
sure that they are not peeking inside...

------
logical42
Losing your Microsoft life is more of a selling point for skydrive, no?

------
braindead_in
What about encrypted content? Is that disallowed too?

------
antihero
"Partial nudity" - what the fuck is this, the 1950s?

------
rshlo
no response from Microsoft on that? They should at least email them and ask
them if that's what they intended to happen with the service.

