Watch what you store on SkyDrive–you may lose your Microsoft life

http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-may-lose-your-microsoft-life/

by yread • 14 years ago

326 203 14 years ago

wmpoweruser.com

iso-8859-13• 14 years ago

Is nudity allowed on other platforms? Dropbox? Google Drive?

chris_wot3• 14 years ago

I'm jealous of your username.

Anyway, back to the point: so what if they don't? Why are they looking at your private data?!?

unimpressive2• 14 years ago

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...

"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;"

omh5• 14 years ago

Google drive also includes a link to their Program Policies: https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...

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.

iso-8859-13• 14 years ago

Sounds like Dropbox have the best terms. In particular I like how they allow publishing lawful pornography, while SkyDrive doesn't even allow private nudity! A world of difference!

sek2• 14 years ago

Well publish is a totally different thing, i have no problem with that as long private shares are excluded. I am not thrilled to publish my Porn Folder to the public anyway (and yeah, i admit i have one).

Interesting would be if they scan anything unpublished.

darklajid• 14 years ago

My wife's pregnant, I'm taking lots of 'Whoa, look at that belly' pictures, which are automatically synced with my Dropbox account. Nudity everywhere. ;-)

I expect I'm having nude pictures of my son in about a month and a half.

Ignoring that I just made fun of all these 'nude is evil' rules: Why should Dropbox look at my data, at all? If I ever get a confirmation that they so much as access it for purposes other than backing it up/restoring it or on my direct request (through the client apps/web ui or whatever) I'm going to leave them for good. They provide storage, not more. And storage attributes (bytes stored) is all they should care about.

mtgx4• 14 years ago

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.

omh5• 14 years ago

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...) :

  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

z92• 14 years ago

Thank you for pointing that out. Didn't notice that. Time to move away from gmail. It's not longer a FUD highlighting some clause saying "they can close your account". Because now they are actively closing user accounts.

Achshar• 14 years ago

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

mooism23• 14 years ago

There is a trade-off between wanting people to store as many types of file as possible, and not wanting to get associated with some of those files. It would not do for Microsoft to get a reputation as "the company that helps wankers store their porn". Some people would use competitors instead because they object to porn, other people (and businesses) would use competitors so as not to associate themselves with porn either.

Why does this reasoning apply to file lockers but not to e-mail? I have no idea.

sek2• 14 years ago

What is the big problem with Porn anyway, especially the US where almost all Internet Porn comes from. Studies have found nearly every man consumes it, how can there be a stigma to it?

Well of course we have to protect the children and they shouldn't find it accidentally, then publishing should be the only issue here.

mikecane• 14 years ago

>>>It would not do for Microsoft to get a reputation as "the company that helps wankers store their porn"

Sorry, but that moment passed decades ago. I'm certain most pr0n is stored on machines running Windows.

zhwang• 14 years ago

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.

chris_wot3• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

Then you should host it on your private cloud.

PS: owncloud.org

chris_wot3• 14 years ago

Agree with you 100% - I think I'll be doing this soon :-)

pwny• 14 years ago

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 :)

omh5• 14 years ago

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.

nestlequ1k3• 14 years ago

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?

omh5• 14 years ago

Absolutely. I don't mean to suggest that nobody should ever use cloud services. But you should be aware that things like this happen, and that there are policies which let them happen.

Dropbox might not be interested in blocking pirated content at the moment, but this could change in the future. Their polices already say that it isn't allowed, so what would you do if all of your pirated movies just disappeared one day?

mtgx4• 14 years ago

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?

delinka3• 14 years ago

"...doesn't mean they are all bad."

And that's how you get into trouble. You have to assume the good actors will at some point in the future execute a bad tactic (via incompetent or even malicious employees) and act accordingly. This doesn't mean you have to avoid cloud storage services altogether. The right thing to do is encrypt all your files before uploading.

pjmlp2• 14 years ago

Agreed 100%.

I'm not giving my private data to someone else to store.

nestlequ1k3• 14 years ago

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.

s_henry_paulson• 14 years ago

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.

drostie• 14 years ago

I don't know; it seems like it might be a fringe enough usage case that it doesn't trigger peoples' outrage. Granted, people don't necessarily think of SkyDrive as a social platform, but with the frequency that embarrassing photos are uploaded to Facebook, you can imagine that there is either an ignorance or a nonchalance toward privacy among the same young people who'd use SkyDrive.

Yes, it's seriously messed up that Microsoft employees are presumably snooping around in your private SkyDrive folders, and it has the potential to really get people to migrate away. But it requires overcoming a huge barrier of apathy, and I'm not sure this has the momentum to do so.

DanBC3• 14 years ago

> [...] 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.

sp3322• 14 years ago

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.

robert_nsu• 14 years ago

It has to be. A friend's account was compromised, but I reset his password for him and MS gave him the opportunity to remove any offending material and everything was ok.

This is slightly annoying though.

philjohn• 14 years ago

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.

bborud2• 14 years ago

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.

dinkumthinkum3• 14 years ago

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.

Numberwang2• 14 years ago

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-8859-13• 14 years ago

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)

Numberwang2• 14 years ago

Thanks for the reply and sorry for not checking the history. This is my first visit to HN.

maayank2• 14 years ago

"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?

gizmo686• 14 years ago

You could also use dropbox,where the dropbox folder is only writen to by a script that encrypts the data. I have a dropbox folder where I put the files I want to store, then every night, I have a script that automaticly encrypts the files that were added/changed and puts that in an a dropbox.enc folder that gets synced with the server.

If someone were to make this into an actual product, it sould be relatively simple to make the encryption happen as soon as a file changes and avoid the latency.

trekkin4• 14 years ago

SpiderOak, Tarsnap, Dropbox + Truecrypt if you don't mind binary clients; web apps with client-side encryption such as aes.io if you don't want to install anything.

justauser3• 14 years ago

Thanks for sharing aes.io. That's the first I've heard of this service. Since their a web app with client-side encryption, I presume their using javascript. If so, any idea how they address the problems mentioned in this post ( http://rdist.root.org/2010/11/29/final-post-on-javascript-cr... ).

Update: Looks like they are using some kind of embedded flash. Does that mean a flash or actionscript cryptography implementation?

msh4• 14 years ago

jungledisk or spideroak.

hachiya• 14 years ago

* tarsnap: uses encryption, paid. http://tarsnap.com

* brackup: uses encryption, host yourself. http://code.google.com/p/brackup

* Camlistore is worth keeping an eye on. Looks like a next-generation all-purpose low level CMS. By the same author of brackup, Brad Fitzpatrick. http://camlistore.org/

Produce• 14 years ago

Rent a fracking server and be done with all these third parties. I'm sure that there's a simple, OSS web based file explorer for when you need to browse the files in Firefox. SSHFS will let you mount the drive as if it was native. The cloud is massively overrated for stuff like this.

gurkendoktor• 14 years ago

I use BoxProtect on OS X and pure EncFS on Windows. The latter was so easy that you should probably ignore BoxProtect because it's closed source. See the bottom of this page:

http://www.boxprotect.com/?lang=en

The advantage of EncFS is that it's not a huge binary blob, instead you transparently store files with garbled names and garbled contents, but an otherwise untouched directory structure. I'm not sure if TrueCrypt can do that too.

jakeonthemove• 14 years ago

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...

ldehaan2• 14 years ago

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.

msh4• 14 years ago

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

ldehaan2• 14 years ago

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.

zxoq• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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???

conradfr• 14 years ago

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 ?

robgough• 14 years ago

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.

mtgx4• 14 years ago

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.

bobsy• 14 years ago

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-cardwell2• 14 years ago

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

tluyben27• 14 years ago

I disagree. Unless illegal by law, it's your private data. If you share it, it would be something different, but as long as it's private, it's just weird.

Others have them, but as long as you don't use the content PUBLICLY, they don't enforce, which is exactly correct.

Edit: sorry, reread. You are right about the encryption part. I still stand by the rest :)

markokocic• 14 years ago

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.

keithpeter• 14 years ago

I'm sure those who really do wish to store and distribute material that really is illegal or unacceptable will use encrypted file storage.

Once again, it is the open and honest user who is close to an edge case who gets caught up.

mtgx4• 14 years ago

I wish all cloud storage providers would prompt an "encrypt with your own key" link before you upload each file, and then do the encryption for you. Of course, then you'll have to trust them with their own encryption method. But if they are using standard encryption methods, that shouldn't be an issue, right?

statictype• 14 years ago

Is Skydrive a backup solution? I thought it was more of a sync-everything-everywhere solution like Dropbox than a raw storage solution like S3.

msh4• 14 years ago

Well, skydrive and dropbox I would call both sync and backup hybrid solutions. They do provide backup features with old versions being accessible.

SoapSeller2• 14 years ago

On the contrary, I think that Microsoft know exactly what they doing. Their users don't.

I'm using some popular cloud storage services(Dropbox, Google Drive) for some of my stuff, but only of public and non-critical-business stuff I need to share.

Everything else backup-worthy goes to client-side-encrypted service(CrashPlan).

joering2• 14 years ago

> All cloud storage providers need a policy similar to what Microsoft have.

No they don't. Its my data. Stay the heck out of my storage room that I pay you for every month, on time.

Its disappointing how far those companies go in playing cops and judges. They should provide service, not the letter of the law.

If cops have a good enough reason to believe you hosting child pornography, they could get a subpoena from a judge and then request Microsoft to open your vault. Otherwise we getting to the point where we don't need judges anymore -- we have bunch of creeps at Microsoft or other company deciding on what is "right" or "wrong". And this is wrong.

avens192• 14 years ago

This is what we have to understand. Microsoft stores this digital information on servers that THEY OWN. That means that if any child pornography or defaming naked picture is found on their property, THEY are liable.

zurn• 14 years ago

Can you expand on your argument why they'd be liable for stuff in a users "private" skydrive folder?

arihant• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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)

kmfrk2• 14 years ago

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.

braindead_in• 14 years ago

What about encrypted content? Is that disallowed too?

rbanffy• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

gbraad• 14 years ago

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?!?!?!

DanBC3• 14 years ago

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/&#...;

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.

riffraff3• 14 years ago

your guess seems strange, I believe:

* what nudity means - "a naked human.."

* what partial nudity means "..a human with breasts or genitals on display"

tluyben27• 14 years ago

Well, in some countries and beliefs a bare ankle is nudity, in others breasts are not (in the Netherlands in the summer you often see naked breasts in the summer even FAR from beaches).

So no, it's very non-clear.

Also, children; you cannot take your baby daughter's picture with bare upper body???

shrikant• 14 years ago

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...

corford• 14 years ago

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.

msh4• 14 years ago

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...

rickmb• 14 years ago

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".

Auguste• 14 years ago

The same thought crossed my mind as I read the article. How does Microsoft know what I'm storing in a private directory?

Creepy level: 110%

Jabbles• 14 years ago

Probably by hashing your files and comparing them to a known list of "banned content". I imagine this is one of the ways Gmail disallows child-porn or malware to be sent.

Less likely but more worryingly it could be skin-tone detection and other pornography detection algorithms with a human filter.

shabda• 14 years ago

From the code of conduct.: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-live/code-of-cond...

> 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?

kijin• 14 years ago

No need to go that far. Try linking to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam

Now I need to go warn a family member who majored in art history.

einhverfr6• 14 years ago

"nudity in non-human forms"

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

nickzoic• 14 years ago

Hey ... I'm partially nude right now, both arms all the way up to my elbows!

I prefer my private data to be "clothed" in an encrypted file system though.

curveship• 14 years ago

> "stay the hell away from Microsoft"

That would imply that MS is unique here -- they're not. Apple's TOS for iCloud * says it scans content and may revoke service if it finds content it deems "objectionable," "obscene" or "in poor taste" (that last one cracks me up ;) ).

If I remember right -- I'm thinking back to the kerfuffle over Google Drive's and Dropbox's TOS -- the other services have similar clauses.

* - http://www.apple.com/legal/icloud/en/terms.html

rhplus• 14 years ago

Dropbox policy says you must not use the service to:

+ publish or share materials that are unlawfully pornographic or indecent, or that advocate bigotry, religious, racial or ethnic hatred;

+ violate the law in any way, or to violate the privacy of others, or to defame others.

https://www.dropbox.com/acceptable_use

Apple says you can't use their service to:

a. upload, download, post, email, transmit, store or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harassing, threatening, harmful, tortious, defamatory, libelous, abusive, violent, obscene, vulgar, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or otherwise objectionable;

http://www.apple.com/legal/icloud/en/terms.html

Google doesn't seem to mention content beyond the DMCA (maybe I'm missing something):

We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement and terminate accounts of repeat infringers according to the process set out in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

http://www.google.com/policies/terms/

forgotusername• 14 years ago

Assuming Microsoft employees are ravenously pouring over your private folders seems a little short sighted: reliable skin detection is fairly easy to accomplish, which given a folder full of photos testing positive, might get a sample flagged for review. From a cost perspective, it would make sense that the sample might not have been reviewed manually until he contacted support.

It may also have been something as simple as having too many images in the folder fuzzy matching the huge DB of porn they have (Bing and Google probably have the largest collections of all kinds of porn on the planet). This is easily done using e.g. scale-invariant feature transform.

Certainly no cause for "stay the hell away from Microsoft".

SoapSeller2• 14 years ago

So only "a sample flagged for review" of my files will get poured over by Microsoft employees?

Still "stay the hell away from Microsoft" in my book.

untog• 14 years ago

The issue here is that it's private content. Scan the stuff I make public, sure. But there is zero reason to be scanning private content- no-one other than me is going to see it.

astangl• 14 years ago

I can easily imagine them scanning for certain filetypes, then displaying large pages of thumbnails for somebody to review. Porn would be readily discernable, and some would surely enjoy having this job.

At least in the early days Microsoft was known for having a large stash of porn on their network, and it probably wasn't just for academic purposes.

powertower3• 14 years ago

I'm suprised how easily people swallow someone else's hearsay and then spray vomit it out as the truth.

For all we know that guy had a lot worse things than a couple of half nude pics in those 9GB of data.

Having followed a bunch of these types of stories on some other sites (webhostingtalk), 9 out of 10 times the "victim" is holding back so much details from the actual story that they might as well be lying.

typicalrunt• 14 years ago

And for all we know he had a picture of his newborn. Aren't you promoting the same hearsay?

you said: I'm suprised how easily people swallow someone else's hearsay and then spray vomit it out as the truth.

and then you said: Having followed a bunch of these types of stories on some other sites (webhostingtalk), 9 out of 10 times the "victim" is holding back so much details from the actual story that they might as well be lying.

You're contradicting yourself. You're stating hearsay (you had no direct contact with the issue of 9/10 lying people, you only heard it from webhostingtalk) and then purporting it to be true.

Regardless of whether the original author is telling the truth, it doesn't matter because that's not the point of the article. The point is that you may lose more than you know simply by being deemed a violator in the eyes of Microsoft, so it's buyer beware.

Relating to your comment: People are innocent until proven guilty in the US. If Microsoft found something that they deemed a code of conduct violation, then they can bring it up with the police or they can at least bring it up with the account owner. Maybe it was SkyDrive uploading more than he expected?

jdboyd• 14 years ago

While we can't easily confirm the truth of what happened, we should be able to confirm if the quote from the SkyDrive ToS is accurate. If it is accurate, then it is worth pointing out to people.

I don't think that private file storage services should be snooping in what I'm storing. Their limitations to what I store should be limited to what's legal (they can have stricter limitations to what I share if they want), and they shouldn't be checking every file (even automatically) to see if it looks legal.

I tried to look for the ToS, but it seems that to see them I have to first get a LiveID and agree to the LiveID ToS, so I gave up at that point.

jongraehl• 14 years ago

The people objecting to this on the basis of hypocrisy are making an obvious error and should know better. The population of people complaining about how they were wronged by a corporation has different characteristics than the population of skeptical comment writers.

Stop pattern matching and start thinking.

rsync• 14 years ago

I'll just leave these here...

http://www.rsync.net/philosophy.html

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/tos.html

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

smashing• 14 years ago

Very clever. I like this.

shredfvz• 14 years ago

I was unsatisfied with your company's support to the point that I cancelled services in less than a month. I recommend against doing business with rsync.

Your support engineers aren't familiar with basic UNIX backup utilities and decline to provide support services despite your advertising holding them in such high regard. From rsync's website: "All technical support is handled by engineers that have the access, authority and expertise to solve your issue.

There are NO first level techs and no auto-responders or ticketing systems. You will always deal with a human engineer immediately.

You will receive support for all interaction you have with your rsync.net filesystem. Support is unlimited, regardless of your tool, platform or implementation."

If there's anyone using rsync who has had a different experience, feel free to speak up, but I was less than satisfied. When I saw the shameless self promotion on HN I felt compelled to give a second perspective.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Well you should read the terms of service, and then adhere to them. Perhaps Microsoft would do well to provide in bold letters near the front that most people will find their terms intolerable and should probably not sign up for SkyDrive.

ginko• 14 years ago

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.

jasonhanley• 14 years ago

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.

petitmiam2• 14 years ago

Is Hotmail more 'unthinkable' than other free web email providers like gmail?

KeyBoardG2• 14 years ago

"It's unthinkable for anyone with technical knowledge"

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

Spooky232• 14 years ago

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.

delinka3• 14 years ago

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."

Spooky232• 14 years ago

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 ;) )

Wintamute• 14 years ago

The user you replied to is (humorously) suggesting that since the SkyDrive ToS are so objectionable they are quite likely to incite profanity (at least amongst the internet cognoscenti), thus itself becoming a forbidden item under its own ToS if placed in a SkyDrive. 'Twas a form of satire, ridicule intended to expose truth.

ctdonath• 14 years ago

Thanks for pointing out the arms/ammo ban. Didn't notice that very relevant point amid the proliferation of prohibitions. This sucks for us federally licensed collectors (FFL C&R); bizarre that storing a copy of my license on SkyDrive could cause MS to completely reject me as a customer/user. Seems a "final straw".

Instead of "place a copy...", I'd suggest rating SkyDrive "zero" and deleting it.

willurd• 14 years ago

I guess we know how Mircosoft feel about the 2nd and 5th amendments. I'm glad I haven't used SkyDrive yet, and now I never will.

EDIT: That being said:

  promotes or otherwise facilitates the purchase and sale of ammunition or firearms.

Maybe everybody should upload content that facilitates the TRADE of ammunition and firearms. That's not against the ToS.

OriginalSyn• 14 years ago

Not only the that but the manager barging into your room to make sure you're not quietly having sex.

einhverfr6• 14 years ago

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!

delinka3• 14 years ago

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

ralfn• 14 years ago

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.

pjmlp2• 14 years ago

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.

garrym• 14 years ago

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.

rshlo• 14 years ago

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.

vipervpn• 14 years ago

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_cx2• 14 years ago

"Maybe".

malloc• 14 years ago

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?

mquinlan• 14 years ago

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.

pragmatic• 14 years ago

> 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.

antihero• 14 years ago

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

etfb2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

etfb2• 14 years ago

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

D9u• 14 years ago

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.

draakon• 14 years ago

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

> 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.

ekiara• 14 years ago

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.

alan_cx2• 14 years ago

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.

vsviridov• 14 years ago

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

tlogan• 14 years ago

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.

dinkumthinkum3• 14 years ago

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?

icebraining2• 14 years ago

why would anyone use this service

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

at-fates-hands• 14 years ago

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.

logical42• 14 years ago

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

zmmmmm2• 14 years ago

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.

CamperBob2• 14 years ago

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?!

mariuolo• 14 years ago

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

KeyBoardG2• 14 years ago

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

Watch what you store on SkyDrive–you may lose your Microsoft life

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