Fuck your "cloud" service

[NobleSavage]

Every "cloud" provider is trying to get their hooks into my data. The ones that have bugged me enough to get on my radar: iCloud, Google Drive, Office 365, Dropbox, Firefox, Ubuntu One, and probably a few others.

The only one I use is Google Drive mostly because my company uses it for sharing files, video conferencing with Hangouts, and scanning in receipts while on the road.

My girlfriend has a Chrome Book. We were using Hangouts and I snapped a few non-sexual pictures of her. When we ended chat I looked for the pictures on my computer - no where to be found. I searched Google Drive (I have a personal account and a business account) and they were not there. I gave up. 3 days later I found the pictures on my cell phone. I'm sure if I investigate for 15 minutes I'll figure out what happened, but I really hate that it happened. I was expecting pictures to be stored on my HD and they ended up on my phone. Who knows what kind of permissions were set. From my experience these services always like more sharing and they update their rules often.

I'm thinking about setting up http://owncloud.org/ just for piece of mind. If anyone else is interested in experimenting with this let me know, we can compare notes. I'm using DigitalOcean.com for hosting. I wouldn't call them mission critical, but they are a great place for development. They have a good community of tinkerers.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

You raise a good point. I agree that it is a disturbing trend. Everything these days seems to want you to be online, and share your information, with very little attention paid to what they are doing with the data. I use drop box because it is convenient. I sent messages over facebook, etc. It'll start there and the next thing we know everything we do and everything we say will no longer be under our control.

Not really on topic but I also see a trend in gaming and computer applications, where they always seem to want me to be online all the time, even if there is no multiplayer function, but I think that is a new form of DRM. Annoying if you don't want to have an internet connection at all times.

 

[NobleSavage]

^^^ Yeah, that's another trend. It's getting harder and harder to sign out of apps.

 

[Togo]

Not really on topic but I also see a trend in gaming and computer applications, where they always seem to want me to be online all the time, even if there is no multiplayer function, but I think that is a new form of DRM. Annoying if you don't want to have an internet connection at all times.

Steam is a DRM application.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Not really on topic but I also see a trend in gaming and computer applications, where they always seem to want me to be online all the time, even if there is no multiplayer function, but I think that is a new form of DRM. Annoying if you don't want to have an internet connection at all times.

Steam is a DRM application.

Steam lets you run offline once you've set things up online. It's also sane about not downloading stuff it doesn't need to--you can copy your games to another machine, when you "download" them it finds them and uses the data. Origin, though--it's redownloaded.

 

[DBT]

I'll add my vote for the OP. Fuck your #%$&*^ "cloud" service, I'll manage my own information, thank you.