by bundie on 6/17/25, 10:56 AM with 96 comments
by hbn on 6/17/25, 1:49 PM
But for everyone else (skipping over the fact that you could have a little more compassion to someone who lost decades worth of important, sentimental data), running your own backups is way more work than should be necessary compared to the mainstream solutions. Especially since most people will likely not hit this scenario anyway, it's just a lottery of the unlucky.
And honestly why are we just accepting that these organizations sitting on infinitely growing wealth can use it to incentivize us to give us all their data for convenience and otherwise worry-free management of it, and then just lock you out one day based on bad algorithms, and offer next to no customer support to resolve it because they don't want to spend a tiny fraction of their operation budget on a department for that?
I'm not sure how you'd enforce regulation on something like that but if we're gonna let big tech run rampant and collect all this data on the population, it seems like the bare minimum to offer a better experience for stuff like this.
by sebstefan on 6/17/25, 1:55 PM
> This feels not only unethical but potentially illegal, especially in light of consumer protection laws. You can’t just hold someone’s entire digital life hostage with no due process, no warning, and no accountability. If this were a physical storage unit, there’d be rights, procedures, timeframes. Here? Nothing. Just a Kafkaesque black hole of corporate negligence.
^ This is what's worth discussing, not opinions about that guy's backups, or what the cloud is, or that this is known to regularly happen. We're already all tech-adjacent
by hyperman1 on 6/17/25, 1:54 PM
by erehweb on 6/17/25, 1:50 PM
by nusl on 6/17/25, 12:53 PM
by geor9e on 6/17/25, 5:22 PM
by lousken on 6/17/25, 2:36 PM
If you force people into bitlocker, at least have a setup wizard at the start that forces them to export the key/print the key, or maybe even ask them if they want their stuff encrypted. For a regular home desktop, it's rarely a need and too much hassle
Secondly, why not offer use something like LUKS does just with a password?
TPM is a horrible way to secure things anyway and you need a PIN for true security.
by southernplaces7 on 6/17/25, 1:33 PM
Export your email archives, spread your personal files across multiple devices and services, and ideally, keep copies of your files on your own backup HDs or at the very least with one other cloud provider, that also happens to be small enough for you to reach a human if something goes wrong.
At least Microscum can't yet lock one out of their own PC or laptop at this stage. This person trusted too much in their OneDrive service.
To note: looking particularly at people who've let themselves become Google-dependent here, just as much as anyone silly enough to trust 30 years of their work exclusively to fucking Microsoft of all things.
by khurs on 6/17/25, 1:17 PM
And follow the 3-2-1 rule https://www.veeam.com/blog/321-backup-rule.html
by npteljes on 6/17/25, 2:50 PM
Data is far more important than society, regulation, individuals give it mind. Doubly so if the data is technically in another jurisdiction. And it's a classic insurance scenario too - redundant storage seems like money thrown in the fire, but after a disaster like OP's, lost data seems invaluable.
Service providers are at the very least part of the problem. For one, they project a lot of confidence for safety, but protect themselves well legally in case of any event - and automate away as much customer interaction as they can.
A nice improvement would be customer service that takes the issues seriously. But, I realize, that is far more complex and expensive than how it sounds.
by jpl56 on 6/17/25, 2:04 PM
Cloud as backup #2, a hard drive as backup #1 and another hard drive in another location as backup #3
by nedt on 6/17/25, 4:07 PM
by Simulacra on 6/17/25, 1:38 PM
by noworriesnate on 6/17/25, 1:59 PM
Synology really did a good job of building something non technical people could use as an alternative to onedrive etc.
by EGreg on 6/17/25, 1:39 PM
Resilio Sync (using bittorrent) kinda sucks for backing up to a USB hard drive that’s been connected.
SynThing is what I use. Even so. What I would really want is something that “just works” with multiple encrypted backups around the world, deduplication and chunking.
There’s also BackBlaze.
by 1970-01-01 on 6/17/25, 1:16 PM
by anonzzzies on 6/17/25, 1:49 PM
by er0k on 6/17/25, 3:27 PM
by theandrewbailey on 6/17/25, 11:33 AM
https://theandrewbailey.com/article/203/Insanity-Locked-Out....
> But one day, you come back to your apartment. It's locked, and won't accept your authentication method. Since your technocrat landlords despise plain old metal keys for some reason (What are you, a peasant?), they provide one of several alternative methods for you to open doors. (Why can't those cyborgs be more like normal people?) They advise you to never share how or with what you use to login to them. Whatever it is, it's not working. You hope there's not an electrical outage somewhere.
> Because you're living in the future, everything is connected to the internet. Like most everything else, your door has a display mounted into it. A message appears, informing you that since you've violated the terms of service, your account has been terminated. You're locked out from all your stuff! There is a customer service robot downstairs, so you try to get some answers from it. Unsurprisingly, the robot is not helpful, not sympathetic, and it won't listen to an unperson.