[HN Gopher] I made a Google sheet of local elections and it's be...
___________________________________________________________________
I made a Google sheet of local elections and it's been removed from
Google Drive
Author : danso
Score : 430 points
Date : 2022-07-13 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| Google - 1st mistake. Drive - 2nd more egregious mistake.
|
| If you actually care about the files you're using, neither of
| those are good choices.
| colordrops wrote:
| This is some heavy slippery slope shit. If you told people that
| this would be happening in 15 years back in 2007 you'd be called
| a paranoid conspiracy nut.
| rob_c wrote:
| Yeah it was something people laughed at you for predicting
| would happen in the age of "everything online". Which is a
| synonym for "everything on the cloud". Which really means "all
| your stuff on someone else's computer"...
| rob_c wrote:
| Lol, if only there were an open office like suite available with
| a libre license which could generate files in some sort of open
| documented format which could be shared by all through a
| clickable interface within a browser...
|
| Nah that's stupid...
| jeffwask wrote:
| It's getting more and more apparent moving Office/Productivity
| apps from your local system to web based is a huge mistake. In 20
| years, I'm going to be a like the guy who writes manuscripts in
| Word Perfect 4.
| S201 wrote:
| It's always been apparent to some of us. Unless I have an
| explicit need to actively collaborate with another person on
| some document I've continued to use locally saved LibreOffice
| documents for everything, and even then I still download a copy
| from Google Drive when finished/periodically.
| jeffwask wrote:
| I was never a fan but I was never actively opposed. Now, I'll
| advise against at every opportunity.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1547256544332488708.html
| gtk40 wrote:
| What alternatives to Google Docs/Drive are folks using? I'm open
| to trying something else.
| tantaman wrote:
| the ai bureaucracy is here.
| danso wrote:
| Key points mentioned in the thread:
|
| - The specific policy violated is "Phishing"
|
| - Sheet was titled "Boston Election candidate websites"
|
| - OP says it's a list of candidate names and their campaign
| websites
|
| - Created in Oct 2021, removed in July 2022
|
| - OP says a similar worksheet with many more records has not been
| removed
| ABeeSea wrote:
| One explanation could be that a candidate's campaign domain
| expired and is now being used for phishing.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Stab in the dark but I imagine some of those campaign website
| domains lapsed, were picked up by domain expiry people because
| they probably have very good visibility (i.e. a lot of links to
| those pages from official/.gov sites), and had phishing or
| sketchy landing pages put on them.
|
| Google then prunes these malicious pages from their search and
| then also flags any docs that have those links in them.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Yeah this seems like the most likely scenario to me, as
| well... Lots of losing candidates who don't want to keep
| paying for their domains.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Although it wasn't specifically mentioned, the file was likely
| shared with the OP's professor. That might be what triggered
| the scan.
| andybak wrote:
| Curious what rule this has tripped. Surely there's tons of
| sheets consisting of name and url?
| willis936 wrote:
| A question with no answer. It's an unnamed node tuned with
| automated routines. Classifier curators will scratch their
| heads too meanwhile victims have to wonder why this is
| acceptable.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| _The_ key point, to me, is that Google monitors all content. I
| don 't think it's much of a surprise, but in context of Google
| Drive, it's pretty terrible. Drive is a anti-product like this.
| It's like if Western Digital decided to update the disk
| firmware to just ship your data to them for scrutiny.
| function_seven wrote:
| > _It 's like if Western Digital decided to update the disk
| firmware to just ship your data to them for scrutiny._
|
| Not exactly what your scenario is, but damn close:
| https://boingboing.net/2007/12/06/western-digital-netw.html
|
| I can't believe it's been 15 years. I remember this like it
| was yesterday, and it's still the reason I won't buy anything
| from WD.
| justinclift wrote:
| Heh Heh Heh
|
| On a related note, back in 2007 Western Digital did indeed
| decide to do some pro-active policing with users files:
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2007/12/07/western_digital_drm_c.
| ..
|
| And yeah, that was about as popular as you'd expect. ;)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The key point, to me, is that Google monitors all content.
|
| Google monitors and restricts _shared_ content. This is
| reasonable, IMO. If someone is hosting documents publicly on
| the Google domain, it 's reasonable for them to make judgment
| calls about what can and cannot be hosted.
|
| Note that the file wasn't _removed_ , it just had public
| sharing and other public features restricted. (Read the
| dialog in the Tweet closely)
| ibejoeb wrote:
| >Google monitors and restricts shared content
|
| Does it monitor _only_ shared content?
|
| If the author is to be believed, and if Google made a
| judgement call as you suggest, it is bad judgement.
|
| I'm not concerned about happens after Google reads the
| document. I'm concerned _that_ Google reads the document,
| and I want to know which ones are read.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| ... that might be a stretch. If this were a private file, I
| don't think it is evaluated in the same way. But he's sharing
| it, so if it is linking to malicious content using Google,
| they could be perceived as complicit so they need to take
| action. Otherwise any spammer in the world can host whatever
| link farms they like.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| It's that we don't really know what is being inspected. I
| don't, at least. I've been looking, and I can't find any
| official statement or specific language in the myriad
| policies.
| nathancahill wrote:
| User stores data in the cloud. User: surprised pikachu face.
| domador wrote:
| This is a pretty pessimistic comment. Cloud storage
| companies should, can, and have been held accountable for
| violating their users' privacy, including when they
| themselves are the violators.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Using data to detect abuse is a very different situation
| from using it in something like ad personalization. The
| companies that provide cloud storage still need to make a
| profit, and that means reducing overhead on things like
| human spam and DMCA processing; A few people abusing
| free/cheap accounts will just increase everyone's data
| costs.
| metadat wrote:
| This isn't an acceptable justification for what is
| happening. Removing people's legitimate private, non-
| spam, non-abusive documents should _never ever_ happen.
| uoaei wrote:
| There is no reason a priori that companies should be
| looking at private data, even automated agents thereof. The
| fact that they do monitor that content represents some kind
| of deviation from the null hypothesis that is important to
| identify and explicate.
| nathancahill wrote:
| In fact the opposite is true, companies care about what
| their servers are being used for, both to prevent abuse
| and legal liability. Any impression users may have to the
| contrary is a result of marketing and the widespread
| concept of "the cloud" as a nebulous entity.
|
| E2E encrypted services are the exception, not the rule.
| This mischaracterization extends so far that when Apple
| announced plans to turn on E2EE for photos (necessitating
| an on-device scanning tool for banned photos before
| upload), the uproar against it was vast and unanimous. So
| now we still have the same photo scanning on Apple's
| servers, and no E2EE.
| xyclos wrote:
| > It has a number of URLs. I suppose it's possible at least one
| of the URLs is no longer legitimate
|
| Just a guess, but since it is a file which lists website urls one
| of those domains was probably flagged as a phishing site, and
| since your doc had a url with the same domain it got flagged as
| well. It wouldn't surprise me to find that one of those
| candidates' sites had actually been hijacked by some phisher.
| Unfortunately just visiting each site wouldn't necessarily reveal
| which one it was since they'd likely have tucked the php shell or
| other phishing stuff at some path away from the root of the site
| to avoid detection from the site's maintainer.
| pilgrimfff wrote:
| I've found mega.nz to be a great alternative to Google Drive.
| I've never had issues with feature parity and it even has a
| proper Linux client.
|
| The combination of flag-happy AI and the way Google will nuke
| your entire account without recourse* or a human ever being in
| the loop makes them a non-starter for me.
|
| *Google might give you recourse if you can get a public uproar
| going on Twitter or HN
| bks wrote:
| A way to export from google - Export a copy of content in your
| Google Account to back it up -
| https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Just call their support to sort out what happened and get it
| fixed.
|
| Oh wait.
|
| Welcome to our glorious future of "internet scale" companies
| which make money by taking advantage of the information YOU GIVE
| THEM don't have care, and can't be made to.
| ZoF wrote:
| computer23 wrote:
| I have had a Google sheet I created years ago and edit
| periodically that has also been flagged but not removed. It has a
| number of URLs. I suppose it's possible at least one of the URLs
| is no longer legitimate.
|
| There is a yellow banner "This file looks suspicious. It might be
| used to steal your personal information" and an option to
| "Request a review".
|
| It also says "This file can still be viewed, edited, and shared,
| but users will see a warning that alerts them that the content
| may be harmful. These restrictions were put in place because this
| content violates Google Drive's Phishing policy."
|
| There is no indication of why the file was flagged.
|
| Despite my concerns about a human looking at my personal file, I
| bit the bullet and clicked review several times but the banner
| remains after several months. Google support hasn't been helpful
| even though I'm a paid user.
|
| I have now received 5 emails from "Google Drive Safety" notifying
| me of this alleged violation.
| kypro wrote:
| If I were you I'd back the whole of your Google account up
| ASAP. It wouldn't be unheard of for Google to suspend your
| entire account for a violation on a single product.
| mr90210 wrote:
| Yikes
| bsedlm wrote:
| why assume that the review would be done by a human?
|
| I'd wager the "reviewer" it's merely a more computationally
| expensive process
| computer23 wrote:
| I suppose you're right that it doesn't explicitly say a human
| is doing the review.
|
| It says:
|
| Review process
|
| If you think this is an error, or if you've modified the file
| to comply with Google Drive's Terms of Service, you can
| request a review.
|
| 1. Your file will be reviewed
|
| This file will remain restricted during the review.
|
| 2. A decision will be made
|
| If the file is found to be safe, all restrictions will be
| removed and you'll be able to use and share it with others.
| If it's found to be unsafe, the restrictions will remain in
| place.
| ttgurney wrote:
| I find this kind of language positively disgusting:
|
| > Your file will be reviewed
|
| > A decision will be made
|
| > If the file is found to be...
|
| > ... restrictions will be removed ...
|
| It is the archetypical "mistakes were made".
|
| Note the constant use of passive voice, intended to hide
| the actor, and to keep you from even thinking about _who_
| is doing these things and thus who is responsible.
|
| By the way, no better is the most likely alternative
| "Google will review...". I'll leave deducing the reasons
| why as an exercise for the reader.
| coliveira wrote:
| Google has created the idea that "an algorithm is
| responsible" for something. This is never the case. An
| algorithm is programed by human beings, therefore the
| humans who created and approved the algorithm are
| responsible for its decisions. It is just a form of
| hiding their intent under the disguise of an algorithmic
| intelligence. I'm pretty sure that if something is bad
| for Google, it will not be approved despite what "the
| algorithm" thinks.
| deltree7 wrote:
| This is spoken by someone who is really clueless about AI
| and Machine Learning
| anonporridge wrote:
| How do you define 'expensive'?
|
| Because if it's measured in watt hours, this computational
| process is almost certainly drastically cheaper than using
| humans to do the same work, especially if you account for 20+
| years of unprofitable training time per compute unit and 76%
| weekly downtime even at peak productivity.
| [deleted]
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I think parent comment mean "a longer automated check than
| the one that flagged the content". I think he meant no
| human would make the call, but another routine.
| powerhour wrote:
| Humans are involved at some point, if only while developing
| the software or writing up the spec. They ought to figure out
| how to do better.
| bsedlm wrote:
| but ultimately, the "executives" making the decisions of
| what software to develop, which bugs to hunt, and so on,
| are all basing their decisions on data, reports, and many
| sorts of 'metrics'.
|
| Additionally, I suppose in a company as big as Google, all
| this decision making is backed by written communications.
|
| All this written stuff is subject to legal scrutiny. All
| must abide by 'approved' rules, guidelines, etc..
|
| Squinting a little bit (maybe some may need to squint
| harder) it's clear that in the end everything is being done
| according to a computational (written) process.
|
| this is essentially what 'skynet' (from the terminator) or
| the matrix actually means. if every human involved is
| following data and written guidelines, the decisions are
| being made by a computer program running across many
| hundreds of humans pushing "paper" around.
| nimbius wrote:
| screw this technocratic neofeudalist garbage. ive been
| encrypting my entire google drive for a while now for exactly
| this kind of overreach in the past.
|
| https://dev.to/petarov/store-encrypted-files-in-google-drive...
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| More people need to be as angry as you are about this kind of
| shit. If people keep viewing these issues as one-offs, we'll
| soon find ourselves "owning nothing, and being miserable."
| deltree7 wrote:
| The only people who are being miserable are the ones
| complaining about this shit. Rest of the world is happily
| leading their lives or have other real world problems that
| they have to deal with and not worry about some elite,
| upper-class problems
| Kye wrote:
| I can care about politicians trying to legislate me out
| of existence _and_ about the privacy and integrity of my
| data at the same time. In fact, the two concerns are
| tightly interwoven.
| bobthechef wrote:
| social_quotient wrote:
| Life as a service or freedom as a service?
| SnaggyJoker wrote:
| It would likely be called a "new technological freedom"
| from hackers and scams etc. Like how the marxists like to
| call marxist monetary policy a "new economic freedom".
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| This is a notification that your requested "being
| miserable" service will be billed to your government tokens
| account on a recurring basis at a rate of $23,465 per
| month.
|
| Thank you for your purchase. Sincerely, your caring daddy,
| government.
| mhneu wrote:
| Yes. The issue is that security and privacy are tragedies of
| the commons. Individuals rarely have the time or skill to
| improve the situation, and it's almost never rational for
| individuals to do so -- the benefit to them is probabilistic
| and low-probability, and the cost in hours of time is high.
|
| But the benefit to society is great of doing better on
| security and privacy.
|
| This is why governments should regulate security and privacy.
| The whole point of governments is to solve collective
| problems together.
| carimura wrote:
| Just got a Synology 4-bay NAS (their SHR hybrid raid is
| pretty neat) to keep a full backup of everything I've ever
| put in cloud storage for this exact reason.
|
| Plus side is plugging in hard drives whisked me back to
| building computers as a kid.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| What synology model by chance?
| hadlock wrote:
| I am using a synology ds418 (current model is ds420,
| probably releasing the DS422 soon) and it has been an
| absolute joy for the last four years, of all my
| technology devices, it requires the least care and
| feeding, it is the closest thing to a technolgical
| toaster I own. It backs up to aws glacier, but really
| nice having all my stuff on a 2 x 1gigabit interface here
| in the house.
|
| There is a whole ecosystem of plugins and stuff, but out
| of the box it works fantastic.
| carimura wrote:
| 420+ with 4 8TB IronWolf drives providing just under 24TB
| of usable space (with SHR-1 which is single drive
| failure). Way more than I'll ever need personally. Also
| desperately trying to pretend I didn't read the comment
| below about a 422+ (last 2 digits are the release year).
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I turned my old desktop into a NAS drive with 3 8tb
| drives shucked from a discount bin at Best Buy a few
| years ago. Total cost (out the door) was about $400 for
| the drives and the time to set it all up, and it has way
| more storage and convenience than I think I can use in a
| long time.
| aborsy wrote:
| Probably 920+!
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| GP's file is shared with others, so your proposal doesn't
| work.
| dorgo wrote:
| Just share the password with others?
| jug wrote:
| I can also recommend Cryptomator (F/OSS) for this client-side
| encryption, which also supports other services than Google
| Drive.
|
| https://cryptomator.org
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| rclone is good too, particularly for people using the
| command line, and supports client-side encryption.
|
| https://rclone.org/
| balderdash wrote:
| And at least on iOS it works nicely with the native file
| system
| kup0 wrote:
| Oh wow, I didn't realize it worked seamlessly with file
| systems like this. Definitely considering this now.
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| How have I not heard of this? Doing a quick HN search I see
| it's been posted multiple times over the years, but with
| minimal uptake.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fcryptomator.org%2F
|
| Perhaps the problem is that the privacy conscious have
| already deplatformed & do their own syncing to private
| cloud, whereas the others are still using the platform &
| don't care as much.
|
| I'm in the first group, but have become increasingly weary
| of keeping servers online (I self host everything) & I'm
| see a lot of promising results in Crytomator... but there's
| one inevitable gotcha: those very platforms can cut you off
| at some point in the future. So, you'll need to multi sync
| across multiple platforms for redundancy.
|
| That said, cryptomator looks good!
| curiousgeorgio wrote:
| > It has a number of URLs. I suppose it's possible at least one
| of the URLs is no longer legitimate.
|
| > "These restrictions were put in place because this content
| violates Google Drive's Phishing policy."
|
| > There is no indication of why the file was flagged.
|
| Isn't your answer in the warning (albeit lacking some
| specificity)? If you have a bunch of URLs in there and admit
| not knowing about their legitimacy, it seems reasonable that at
| least one of them matches a database of known phishing URLs.
| Isn't it also reasonable to expect (and in many cases _want_ )
| a company hosting publicly-shared files to notify users when
| content matches some heuristics for unsafe content, especially
| given the prevalence of phishing attempts?
|
| That said, there may still be a case to argue that the review
| process, heuristic, lack of transparency, and other
| implementation details are flawed. But I don't have a problem
| with them posting a warning message on content that looks
| suspicious.
|
| Complete removal, on the other hand (as in the case of OP) is
| another story, especially given Google's laughable process (or
| lack thereof) for appealing such cases.
| rsync wrote:
| What, pray tell, is a "legitimate" url ?
|
| What is wrong with a list of phishing urls ?
|
| Sounds simultaneously useful and innocuous to me ...
| curiousgeorgio wrote:
| You're right - a URL is either a technically valid URL or
| it isn't, but in this context, we're clearly talking about
| links to phishing sites (or not).
|
| As someone who operates a service that allows people to
| create and share lists of links on a public site, I can
| tell you from experience that it's _not_ as innocuous as
| you might think. Scammers routinely use a trusted domain to
| host a link to their malicious final destination since the
| initial, trusted domain in often the one given the most
| scrutiny (e.g., from an email). It sounds silly to more
| technical users who understand how the web works, but
| unfortunately it 's effective and super popular in phishing
| campaigns.
|
| To your point, yes - a list of phishing URLs would be
| useful in a lot of cases, but it's difficult for automated
| tools to tell the difference between those legitimate use
| cases and the much more common cases used for phishing, so
| they err on the side of caution. As mentioned, the human
| review / appeal process surely has room for improvement.
| mcv wrote:
| This is our regular reminder from Google that "the Cloud" means
| "someone else's computer". Whatever you store in the cloud is not
| under your control.
|
| The cloud can be convenient, but it's not under your control, so
| always also keep a copy that's under your control. Of course your
| local copy isn't secure either, so having a copy in the cloud is
| still a good idea, but it shouldn't be your only copy.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Does google read every single document in drive, or is it just a
| sample?
| compiler-guy wrote:
| every single one that isn't encrypted
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Is that true, or is it a hypothesis?
|
| I'd really like to know if Google does process every single
| file. I'll operate as if it does, but I wish someone from
| inside would confirm and elaborate.
| g42gregory wrote:
| I've always assumed that Google Drive can not be used for
| anything important/critical. I store files on local disk and back
| up to Dropbox. Other backup services should be Ok too, I presume?
| znpy wrote:
| Is that even legal?
|
| Google going through your private documents and arbitrarily
| deciding what's legitimate and what is not?
| bborud wrote:
| I wish there was an open source spreadsheet solution I could host
| myself.
|
| Update: thanks for tips. Will have a look when I get home.
| sofixa wrote:
| Like LibreOfficen Online?
| radec wrote:
| I think collabora might me the most active version of it:
| https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code
|
| I haven't tried it myself.
| layer8 wrote:
| There's Collabora Online:
| https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online
|
| It integrates with NextCloud:
| https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/
| haunter wrote:
| OnlyOffice can be self hosted
|
| https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-workspace.aspx?from=defa...
| jfoster wrote:
| Someone must be working on one, in light of stuff like this,
| surely?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| remake it on Word 365?
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Microsoft also scans and takes down anything that looks like
| public-facing PII in 365.
| vba616 wrote:
| Strictly speaking, it's better than the alternative, but the
| warnings imply that anything in Office saved to a network
| location is "public facing", and if that implies Microsoft
| has inside information that it is...
| anoncow wrote:
| Are you a Google One subscriber?
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| G1/Gsuite are not omitted from this type of scanner. O365 does
| it too.
| [deleted]
| iso1631 wrote:
| Looking forward to the day when the pendulum swings back to
| personal computing rather than a terminal session on someone
| else's computer
| bell-cot wrote:
| You mean like back in 1987 - when Joe D. User could install MS-
| DOS from a couple floppy disks, then WordPerfect and Lotus 123
| similarly, then just _use_ his PC for years - withOUT knowing
| what Windows Registry entries, security patches, spam, phishing
| e-mails, virii, typosquatted domain names, SaaS, etc., etc.,
| etc. were? Let alone having to regularly pour time & grief
| into dealing with those?
|
| That I am aware of, every one of my family members who has
| retired in the past 15 years was stuck using MS Windows at
| work. Every one of them has been happy to delete MS and Windows
| from their life - getting rid of their home computer, buying an
| Apple iPad, and running their modest on-line lives from that
| iPad.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I'm not convinced that's a pendulum that will swing. There's a
| lot of big money trying to keep it up
| nmstoker wrote:
| Is this happening to public or private files?
|
| Could understand certain kinds of causes being applied to public
| / shared files but private files ought to be pretty much
| untouched.
|
| Of course, that's probably not how it really works when you're
| relying on cloud providers.
| njharman wrote:
| I don't understand. Was this document shared? Or private? Who is
| google trying to protect from phishing?
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| This would be very helpful to know in this case. Is it even
| possible that the document was public?
| kyrra wrote:
| It looks like it was shared. A further down tweet said:
|
| > I keep material in Google drive because my graduate school
| uses Google - so I use it to be able to share material with my
| professor.
|
| Google doesn't seems to do fewer TOS checks unless they are
| shared with other people.
| bedast wrote:
| > Is this something researchers using Google Drive should be
| aware of?
|
| This is something EVERYONE using Google Drive should be aware of.
| Your data on Google Drive is scanned by Google (and not only for
| policy violations), meaning it is not secured FROM Google, and
| false positives can and will cause your data to be lost and cause
| your account to be flagged. Using Google Sheets means that is
| your only copy of the data, so you also have no backup.
|
| Google does not provide support for this service.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| This is why I use local storage as my backup methods. Just
| upgraded my total storage capacity to 28TB with 3 copies. I may
| add cloud backups once I figure out how to make sure my uploads
| are encrypted, but owning your own storage is the only surefire
| way to make sure nobody else can play games with your data
| Entinel wrote:
| This isn't necessarily aimed at you but a bit of a rant
| because honestly I feel like encrypted backups for personal
| use are evangelized to the point that it's ridiculous. If my
| entire hard drive was dumped on the internet, there is
| nothing that would happen. That isn't to say people should
| use them but people should consider their threat model.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| I don't have a problem with you saying they're ridiculous;
| I'm sure a lot of things are over-evangelized. I have no
| emotional attachment to anything except my data. However I
| am very private so I simply feel more comfortable having my
| data encrypted in the cloud and ideally encrypted on my
| HDDs. The former for backup privacy, the latter for privacy
| if I need to RMA an HDD one day.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| > If my entire hard drive was dumped on the internet, there
| is nothing that would happen.
|
| What do you mean by this? There's nothing personally
| compromising on your hard drive?
| Entinel wrote:
| No, I'm old school. Anything personal gets downloaded,
| printed, then deleted.
| giobox wrote:
| 3 copies is great, but is one of them offsite? Without an
| offsite location I can't consider my personal data safe, and
| offsite is generally harder if you are buying your own
| disks/using local storage. If all three copies are in your
| house, you are still vulnerable to thefts/acts of god etc,
| regardless of who owns the disk the data is sitting on.
|
| Personally I think local storage is a bit of a losing battle
| for long term personal backups; the running costs of
| expanding and replacing disks at 28tb size start to get
| significant if you do it properly with offsite compared to
| the range of affordable encrypted cloud backup services out
| there, many of which let you provide your own private key for
| storing the data encrypted at rest on their side (how I use
| backblaze right now for all my machines).
|
| I'm honestly not sure I could do local storage well at less
| than the $65 per computer per year I pay Backblaze - one new
| drive a year for a NAS is already more than I pay Backblaze
| annually before other costs and my time to maintain are
| factored. While I'm not accusing you of this, my experience
| is many people running their own NAS do so because they enjoy
| running their own NAS if they are totally honest with
| themselves, not because its necessarily the best or most
| convenient option.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| I do keep one copy offsite. However, I'm not against cloud
| backups, I just prioritized setting up my local setup first
| so that I'm not dependent on the cloud. If I have 2 HDDs +
| backblaze and one HDD dies, it would be a pain to download
| 10TB of data from backblaze to set up the replacement HDD.
| I totally understand your point about running a NAS and
| I've actively tried to avoid setting one up. My storage
| system is entirely external HDDs. I want to expand to a NAS
| in the future but that'll be for fun, not backup (at least
| until I can afford 3 separate NAS instances for backup).
|
| That being said, do you have any advice on how to encrypt
| data before uploading to cloud? I'm not at that stage yet
| so I haven't done deep research, but I've heard of things
| like veracrypt/truecrypt? And I've heard enough good things
| about backblaze (and enough bad things about other
| companies like google) that I'd be comfortable going with
| them if the price is in my budget and if I can just figure
| out the encryption angle.
| giobox wrote:
| With backblaze its as simple as typing your own private
| key in a box on the app preferences page, assuming you
| trust backblaze etc- that's all thats required to encrypt
| your backups such that backblaze cant decrypt them server
| side. The caveat is of course if you lose that key, you
| lose access to your backups and there is nothing
| Backblaze can do to help.
|
| > https://www.backblaze.com/backup-encryption.html -
| scroll to "Adding your own passphrase"
| rsync wrote:
| You should consider the 'borg' tool for encrypted backups.
|
| Just google:
|
| Both holy grail backups
|
| ... for stavros' nice write up.
| cube00 wrote:
| _> I 'm curious what triggered this._
|
| 80/20 incomplete machine learning model.
|
| One day people and institutions will get the message and stop
| using Google for important things.
|
| Sadly it won't even be the next generation as they're all rusted
| into the ecosystem with Chromebooks provided by their school
| districts.
| danso wrote:
| I taught data journalism at the graduate school level (not to
| the OP) and I regularly used Google Sheets as a channel for
| hosting data, which were typically U.S. public datasets, like
| city crime reports, Census demographics, election results, etc.
| This is in addition to hosting CSV and .sqlite files on the
| class homepage and Github repo.
|
| The reason why Google Sheets was so handy was because it's a
| great interface for data exploration. I could show students
| features about the data, and sort/filter/highlight, without
| having to distribute/create spreadsheet files. I guess if
| Google Sheets ends up being draconian with its content filters,
| I could link to Github-hosted CSVs, but it's not quite the
| same.
|
| Haven't checked my classroom Google sheets recently, but if
| they're untouched, it might have helped that they were all set
| to public view. Maybe the flagging algorithm looks at private
| sheets with much more suspicion.
| jfoster wrote:
| > Maybe the flagging algorithm looks at private sheets with
| much more suspicion.
|
| You could be right, but jeez... shouldn't it be the opposite?
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| For sure no. If you are storing a trove of copyrighted
| movies, revenge porn, or child porn then you would for sure
| not have it marked for public access. Google clearly
| doesn't want their storage to be used for these nefarious
| purposes but anyone who has tried to train a ML algorithm
| knows, false positives is the name of the game so they
| should really only be used in places where false positives
| do little to no harm.
| jfoster wrote:
| It's a shame that Google are choosing to focus on policing what
| people think of as their private data.
|
| Meanwhile, they seem to be taking their eye off the ball when
| it comes to the spam filtering that many of their users might
| wish for. In just the past week, I've received noticeable
| amounts of spam via: Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and
| Google Photos.
|
| I'm puzzled about how Google are choosing to allocate their
| resources. It doesn't seem likely that governments would be
| asking Google to specifically police spreadsheets for possible
| phishing data. The owners of the files definitely aren't asking
| for their access to their own data to be cut off. So what are
| the origins of this effort?
|
| I have to admit, I originally thought that Google Drive was the
| obvious choice over every alternative that existed, but I can
| see now that I would prefer an offline or privacy-driven
| alternative. The risk of losing files to a Google Drive machine
| learning black hole & then facing Google's customer service
| black hole might be small, but it's also nightmarish.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > I have to admit, I originally thought that Google Drive was
| the obvious choice over every alternative that existed, but I
| can see now that I would prefer an offline or privacy-driven
| alternative.
|
| I'm not being miserable or spiteful when I say I'm really
| glad this happens. Mono-cultures are dangerous and
| undesirable, and whether the cause is "network effects" or
| more active monopoly tactics it's good that there's some
| drivers towards alternatives.
|
| Ultimately, when we have interoperability (by legislation if
| necessary), people will have the genuine choice to share
| documents via Google, where their work may be censored or
| arbitrarily deleted, or through another service. It will not
| matter whether others in the group use AcmeDocs or
| GoogleDocs, we will all be able to share and edit via
| interoperable protocols. But when Google screw up like this,
| they will lose customers who have no barrier to migrate to
| another Docs client.
|
| That will raise software quality. It would be a _real
| marketplace_.
| cube00 wrote:
| The spam that's allowed to be sent through Google Docs
| @mentions has been horrendous lately. What's even worse is
| they only let you ban the individuals. You can't turn off the
| notification email messages.
|
| Thankfully I'm about ready to close down my Gmail account
| (still stuck needing a Google account for now) but it's a
| good reminder of what I won't be missing when I finally get
| out.
|
| The risk of facing the "black hole" may be larger then you
| think. There's a person who posts a common "recovery how-to"
| in the support forums when people get locked out and that
| page got 83,878 views last month.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I've never encountered this @mentions Spam, are they using
| it as some mechanism for verifying a Gmail account?
|
| I received a notification from Gmail the other day that
| "Someone added <made-up-email-address@my domain> as their
| recovery email.". And my only option was to disconnect the
| email. By disconnecting the email, I would be confirming to
| the account owner that the email landed in someone's inbox.
| By not confirming the email, I would be allowing my domain
| to be associated with a Gmail account potentially used for
| nefarious activity.
|
| Given Google's scorched earth approach to deactivating
| associated Google Accounts when it comes to things like the
| Play Store, I felt I needed to disconnect the account.
| cube00 wrote:
| Just for sending plain old spam because they know these
| notifications bypass a lot of the filtering. Removed the
| names in case they've come from hacked accounts.
|
| Google Drive
|
| _> Random Name (randomcharactershere@gmail.com) has
| invited you to view the following document:
| Private__file-Nyela-(random characters)
|
| > If you don't want to receive files from this person,
| block the sender from Drive_
|
| The painful part is the last bit, you can only block that
| single sender, you can't turn off all notifications.
|
| Google Docs
|
| _> Random Name (randomcharactershere@gmail.com)
| mentioned you in a comment in the following document
| Direct_message_with_Salma
|
| > 1 comment
|
| > Random Name * 4:58 PM, Jul 11 Contact Helen and rate
| her request to date here https://morerandomcharacters.exa
| mple/evenmoremorerandomchara..._
|
| Google Docs has the same problem, you follow the link to
| turn it off and you end up at:
|
| _> Notification settings of myemailaddress@gmail.com for
| Direct_message_with_Salma_
|
| So you can only ever disable notifications from that
| single document.
| water-your-self wrote:
| Just start spamming executives with @google addresses and
| watch it get resolved quick
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| Or watch all your google accounts get disabled quick
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| Google wasresponding to groups that complain that the spam
| filter was heavy. Now some spam is getting through, people
| start to complain about that which will make the spam filter
| heavy again. Not sure what the right answer is.. fastmail has
| seemingly figured it out.
|
| Removing files in google drive will kill drive. How can you
| trust them?
| jfoster wrote:
| The spam that is getting through seems like really obvious
| spam. Not just for a human, but for a classifier, too.
|
| I looked at an "out of the blue" example just now:
|
| 1. Sent from a Gmail address where the name doesn't come
| close to matching the name suggested by the sender address.
|
| 2. Email body is in Latvian, a language I have no
| association with.
|
| 3. About 20 other recipients, none associated with me.
|
| 4. Subject line is nonsensical (not even words) and an
| email address.
|
| 5. Email body is one line.
|
| 6. PDF attachment, with no mention of it in the email body.
|
| 7. Looks automated, but came from a Gmail address.
|
| Of course, none of these in isolation is a definitive
| indicator of the email being spam, but given that there's
| at least 7 anomalies, considering the amount of data Google
| has & that they pride themselves on machine learning,
| shouldn't they be catching something like this?
| cube00 wrote:
| Arriving in the inbox is one thing, but the thing really
| throwing me is they're getting the "important according
| to Google magic" flag applied. How can mail that fails
| all the tests you've mentioned (I just ran through them
| on some spam I've been getting) get such a high
| importance rating?
| bostik wrote:
| Probably because it was NOT flagged as spam and has a
| document attached.
|
| I wish I was being facetious.
| notahacker wrote:
| tbf, the Latvian bit probably counts in its favour
| because I doubt many spammers bother with Latvian (or
| that it's particularly unusual for Latvian speakers to
| have English Gmail accounts).
|
| Still scratching my head at how their calibration can let
| something like that through and stick a random genuine
| circular from Twitter in my spambox though...
| mistermann wrote:
| > It doesn't seem likely that governments would be asking
| Google to specifically police spreadsheets for possible
| phishing data.
|
| I would think any first class modern day regime would be on
| the lookout for anyone who might have it in their mind to
| challenge that authority, and election related keywords could
| certainly fall into that filter depending on how coarse it
| is. I wouldn't expect they would just blatantly take down
| documents though, so I suspect I am being excessively
| conspiratorial here.
| simion314 wrote:
| I suspect is a security "hysteria", everyone wants to
| market their shit as secure, one a website we were allowing
| users to host their pdf files, some asholes are making some
| missleading pdfs pretending they are some company and they
| put in the pdf a link to some bad stuff.
|
| One report and the entire website is blocked, we clean the
| website immediately but already all the shitty antivirus
| and security software is blocking our domain, it took us
| weeks to have those bastards fix the issue, one of the big
| security companies even had the form you need to use to
| submit reports broken for weeks... So unfortunately if a
| "bad" link appears on your website it will costs you a lot
| of time to get it all back to normal, my advice , for user
| generated content just use a different domain so if shit
| happens your main domain does not get blocked by the
| browser makers and antivirus companies.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I think no matter what google does here they won't win - if
| they increase the sensitivity of spam filters, people will
| complain (rightly) that legitimate content is getting
| blocked. If they lessen the sensitivity people will complain
| (rightly) about too much spam.
| FredPret wrote:
| Are we watching Google turn into IBM
| px43 wrote:
| Have you tried using anything non-Google recently? Everything
| else is much, much worse IMO. Remember we all mostly moved to
| Google because they were the only ones who could actually deal
| with spam, gaming, and the more sophisticated attacks at scale.
| Now that they're the only game in town, adversaries are
| focusing hard on getting past their filters etc, and some are
| getting through.
|
| When you have literally millions of people whose livelihood
| depends on gaming algorithms, or getting past content filters,
| then some highly intelligent and motivated individuals are
| going to get through, that's a fact of life.
|
| When someone figures out how to train their robots better than
| Google, then Google will have some competition, but they seem
| to be about a decade ahead of everyone else, and only
| accelerating relative to the rest of the field, so I'm doubtful
| that anyone is going to catch up any time soon.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| > Have you tried using anything non-Google recently?
|
| Yes. I went from self-hosted to Proton recently. Spam
| filtering is better, UI is better, and customer support /
| transparency is way better than anything I've seen from
| Google in the past decade. Of course the various outages /
| issues over the past three days have been frustrating so
| there's that.
| highwind wrote:
| I've been off Google for the past 4 years. Only exception is
| watching YouTube videos time to time. My digital life has
| been just fine.
|
| > Everything else is much, much worse IMO.
|
| I wouldn't say it's much much worse. Lot of the digital
| service I use, I pay for. And they have human support when I
| need it.
|
| I don't miss Google services at all.
| cube00 wrote:
| In terms of spam using website specific email addresses has
| solved it for me (eg. hackernews@mydomain.example) No spam
| filter required.
|
| Of course Google and Microsoft both punish me by sending my
| mail to spam (even years later) for using my own domain but
| that's what I'd expect from the big players.
| balls187 wrote:
| Since you have your own domain, I'd assume yes--have you
| gone through the process of improving deliverability using
| SPF, checking reputation, etc?
| cube00 wrote:
| I've done the lot. SPF, not blacklisted, DMARC signed and
| set to reject.
|
| From what I can tell it's just that small domains are
| guilty until proven innocent. However it seems at lower
| volumes you can never send enough email to get past the
| thresholds they've set so you're forever guilty in their
| eyes. Very convenient.
|
| I've also signed up to both Microsoft and Google's email
| tools and neither shows any information because I don't
| send enough mail while they still keep making my mail as
| spam. It's getting to the point where I'll probably have
| to use a 3rd party SMTP rely as the family don't
| appreciate their mail going to spam while all their
| friends on GMail go straight to the Inbox.
|
| A nice new addition is Microsoft is flagging any links I
| include in my message as "suspicious" and giving the
| users scary warnings. Meanwhile I can see they still take
| the opportunity to scan and fetch the URL and yet still
| can't determine it's safe.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Is your email coming from a self hosted server on AWS or
| your home ISP provided IP?
| cube00 wrote:
| Self hosted on a cloud provider (not AWS).
|
| Interestingly when I logged into Microsoft's Smart
| Network Data Services I could also see my VPS provider
| had claimed the IP block as well so they were clearly
| invested in making sure spam was under control. But nope,
| still not enough for Microsoft. At one point the mail was
| even getting hard 550 refused. I contacted their support
| who to their credit replied, but to less of their credit
| gaslit me and claimed there was no blocking occurring
| despite me pasting them full error message with all their
| tracking IDs in it. The next day mail was allowed in
| again but still ends up in spam.
| notagoodidea wrote:
| Oh yes the scan and fetch on Outlook is magic, especially
| when you are sent links that can be access once before
| self destruction. So fun. It was at precious job, forgot
| if I was able to deactivate it or just had to use another
| mail.
|
| I think to switch to my own domain mail adress but I
| think to use Migadu [1] instead or even try to host
| anything.
|
| [1] https://www.migadu.com/
| [deleted]
| chaosharmonic wrote:
| > One day people and institutions will get the message and stop
| using Google for important things.
|
| I've taken to telling people for _years_ now, for this exact
| reason, that friends don 't let friends use Google's password
| manager.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Pretty much by design, I imagine.
| dillutedfixer wrote:
| "Sadly it won't even be the next generation as they're all
| rusted into the ecosystem with Chromebooks provided by their
| school districts. "
|
| This is so true that it hurts. I went back to college later in
| my life starting in 2018. It's astonishing to me how ingrained
| Google services are to the kids I'm in school with. Even though
| we have Office 365 and a full suite of apps available to us for
| free, when we do group work the de-facto decision that students
| come to is to create Google drive shares, or shared Google docs
| that are tied to personal accounts. It gets so stupidly messy
| and the apps just seem so inferior. Everyone uses the same
| Slides template so everything looks the same. Ugh.
| notagoodidea wrote:
| Sometimes it is also due to the university changing their
| systems too often. When I was at uni, we had to switch from
| self-hosted + roundcube webmail to full Google suite to full
| Microsoft 365 : for mail and tooling in less then 9y. With
| transition period where everything was half-broken.
| nvr219 wrote:
| I highly recommend everyone stop using Google, including Google
| drive. But self-hosting "cloud" file storage is complicated for
| the average user, and easy to break, so I recommend using Dropbox
| (which for the past few years has used MS Office Online as editor
| for MS Office docs) and back that up on your own. Why Dropbox?
| It's super reliable, doesn't force its own filetypes on you
| (mostly), and has native clients for everything including linux
| cli. So this is something you can set up for your entire family,
| have backups go reliably and in the background, so that if
| something like this happens you can restore. And of course, for
| any sensitive files you don't want Dropbox to read, you gotta
| encrypt it yourself - but I'd say for the average user that
| encryption is only needed in rare occasions.
| judge2020 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31680894
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Use Google for fun, casual, fleeting things. Never trust them
| with anything important.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Bingo, right up there with "if you want something to be
| confidential don't make it digital."
| milesskorpen wrote:
| I'll bet that some of the candidate websites this file linked to
| had been taking over by malicious actors and WERE being used for
| phishing. By linking to them and sending them traffic, you were
| perceived as a bit complicit.
| carvking wrote:
| Ah big brother, he loves me soooo much.
|
| https://filecoin.io/ looks to be something that could work as a
| backup for your storage needs. Anyone with experience using
| Filecoin ?
| layer8 wrote:
| Two basic rules:
|
| - Always have backups.
|
| - Cloud providers are not your friend, especially in their unpaid
| tiers.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| Well, as it has been pointed many times in the past, private
| companies have no obligations to provide any kind of a service,
| for free or for profit. See Youtube removing videos, Twitter
| banning users, etc.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Is it actually removed or just restrictiones from sharing
|
| Google drive in the last has restricted sharing of files that
| violate terms but I don't think I've heard if instances of then
| deleting private data.
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Does stuff on Google Drive get hand moderated or just scanned?
| cube00 wrote:
| Google can't even spare humans to rescue their paying Google
| One customers from automated account bans. [1] There's no way a
| human is involved in this ban.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31073302
| newbieuser wrote:
| engrossing...
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Both. I have reported fraud forms to them before.
| brightball wrote:
| That is infuriating.
| TIPSIO wrote:
| Just sharing my story. If I recall...
|
| I made a voting tool (legitimate and funded by a campaign) with a
| throw away email as the contact:
|
| <state><voting>@gmail.com
|
| It was removed. For the OP, this could be an auto flag error or
| this could be something else.
|
| (Edit: I bet) Google takes the election stuff seriously.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| > Google takes manipulating elections seriously.
|
| FTFY
| LegitShady wrote:
| what did your voting tool do? I suspect google like many other
| tech companies are trying to avoid having their platforms used
| to manipulate election activities and the definition of
| manipulate might be very broad. It being funded by a campaign
| might not matter to google at all.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Being funded by a campaign might even be a negative, as it
| would likely _increase_ the odds that the address is being
| used for election manipulation.
|
| It would be easy to register <state>voting@gmail.com, start
| using it as a contact for public-facing election-oriented
| documents, and get at least some people confused about
| whether I was officially associated with <state>'s election
| apparatus. Given the current environment, I'm positive Google
| very much doesn't want their systems being used to (even
| accidentally) impersonate election officials.
| pomatic wrote:
| How do you know 'google takes election stuff seriously'?
| Causation!=effect. TBH I'm surprised the OP even asked the
| question 'why did an algorithm remove my stuff?'. No google
| employee is going to tell you (even if they knew, which is
| quite doubtful given the complexities of machine learning). If
| you sign up for a service which is machine-managed, you are
| subject to the whims of the machine. Occams razor suggests it
| is unlikely there is a conspiracy, or malice at play. The
| machine is just doing its job for its masters, possibly badly,
| possibly not, but the general populace will never know one way
| or the other.
| TIPSIO wrote:
| You're right, I don't. Just assuming based on my personal
| experience and a strange event.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I can provide another datapoint. When I was at Arist (YC S20)
| we experienced tons of content filtering at the carrier level
| around election time. Messages that merely mentioned the word
| "vote" or "election" were getting blocked by many carriers. A
| few months later none of these restrictions seemed to exist.
| So not just Google.
| raarts wrote:
| Carrier level? If this is true this should be national
| news.
| tholman wrote:
| Am thinking that a few of the domains on the list expired and
| were snapped up by malware/scammer sites causing the spreadsheet
| to seem super sus to a machine scanning/checking urls.
| mh- wrote:
| this is usually the case when these posts pop up, yep.
| metadat wrote:
| If this were the case, then the reason for flagging should be
| fully disclosed in a transparent fashion to the end-user, with
| specific details.
|
| Otherwise it's super confusing to have the entire document be
| marked "suspicious", and end-user may reasonably (naively)
| still paste and visit the link. When this happens, the entire
| effort to keep them safe is subverted by Google's own poor
| design.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Only a dumb detective will reveal how they caught the thief
| metadat wrote:
| Sometimes the ones who need protection are even dumber than
| the thieves. Where does this leave us?
| legalcorrection wrote:
| How can any serious business use GSuite with problems like this.
| EricE wrote:
| 1. People are cheap 2. People tend to dramatically
| underestimate that yes, stuff like this could happen to them
| too
| josefresco wrote:
| I don't see any indication that he was using paid Google
| Workspace (new name for G Suite)
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The cloud is someone elses computer. Act accordingly.
|
| It's a shame this person lost their work. More and more stories
| like this need to come to light and we need to convince others
| the cloud is a risk, not a solution.
| EricE wrote:
| One of the killer features of a QNAP NAS is the built in cloud
| backup utilities for Google and Microsoft - it always amazes me
| how often I have to fight with people to turn them on.
|
| You'd think after the original Photobucket meltdown people
| would be more cognizant of stuff like this, but here we (still)
| are :(
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You can roll this yourself with rclone, for the DIY folks.
| domador wrote:
| Part of the response is for users to trust the cloud less, but
| I wish part of the response would be to increasingly hold cloud
| storage companies accountable such that in the future they
| can't get away with this kind of abuse without severe
| consequences for them.
| golem14 wrote:
| I don't believe the OP has lost the work - looks like sharing
| has been disabled.
|
| It's still pretty sucky.
| jfoster wrote:
| Doesn't sound like it...
|
| 1. The author of the thread refers to the file having been
| removed:
| https://twitter.com/mkramer/status/1547257266465914882
|
| 2. The author of the thread says they're storing csv files on
| their hard drive in future:
| https://twitter.com/mkramer/status/1547262861105397760
| jfoster wrote:
| It was a solution. Google Drive was great until they turned
| user/customer hostile. Arguably, no one could really have seen
| this coming, because this doesn't even seem to make business
| sense. Google are seemingly acting against the reputation of
| their own services.
| allturtles wrote:
| It does make business sense. Drive is facing serious abuse
| problems. See for example this article [0] for the other side
| of this coin. Google is trying to come up with automated
| solutions for shutting down 'abusive' items. The OP is an
| example of the automated solutions not working that well.
|
| [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/google-is-
| finally-do...
| jfoster wrote:
| You are conflating spam from 3rd parties with having a
| private file that Google thinks they need to block you from
| accessing.
|
| It is 100% possible (and not even difficult) for Google to
| prevent me from receiving spam from other Google Drive
| users whilst also allowing me to access my own Google Drive
| files.
| allturtles wrote:
| I suspect OP has not really lost access to their own
| files. Per the blog post about this system [0], "When
| it's restricted, you may see a flag next to the filename,
| you won't be able to share it, and your file will no
| longer be publicly accessible, even to people who have
| the link."
|
| My guess is OP has multiple accounts, created this file
| on account A, and can no longer access the file while
| logged in as account B, so it seems to be "removed from
| Drive." But I could be wrong, in which case I agree with
| you, this doesn't make sense as an anti-spam measure.
|
| https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/12/abuse-
| notifi...
| vinyl7 wrote:
| > Arguably, no one could really have seen this coming
|
| Maybe 15 years ago when all this was new....but it's been
| pretty obvious that this was the course of things over the
| last 6-7 years. It makes business sense when there is no
| competition.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Google (and their ilk) are risk adverse.
|
| Is it legal to keep a list of electoral candidates and their
| public info? Yes.
|
| Could it be disinformation? It could. Would that be harmful
| to Google to have Google Sheets be used to distribute? Yes.
|
| Does the risk of it being bad outweigh the benefit of keeping
| legal content? Yes, strongly, and it *always* will.
|
| It is always in Google's interest to be as risk adverse as
| possible. They always will be. (This applies to all clouds
| too)
| jfoster wrote:
| > Would that be harmful to Google to have Google Sheets be
| used to distribute? Yes.
|
| If it's a private file (not shared), the question doesn't
| even make sense.
|
| Some degree of control might make sense for 100% publicly
| shared content on Google Drive, but how does it make any
| sense that they are cutting off access for the owner of the
| content?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Why risk it, if you're Google?
| jfoster wrote:
| Because part of being big & successful if you're Google
| involves operating a business. If your approach to
| everything is "why risk it?" then you eventually just
| choose to shut everything down.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I mean that is literally what Google has been doing.
| EricE wrote:
| There is no cloud, just someone else's computer...
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