Younited - all your content 100% alive

http://www.younited.com

by noyesno • 13 years ago

38 38 13 years ago

Jugurtha4• 13 years ago

What's wrong with Dropbox, and in which way this is an "alternative"..

Or is the fact they made a dubsteppy video of young people dressed funny performing weird contortions going to make me sign up ?

I fail to see the problem there is to solve here. It also presupposes other services aren't secure (no back-doors, etc...).

ak39• 13 years ago

Well, their USP (unique selling proposition) is that they are secure and that they respect your privacy.

From a functional/feature point of view, F-Secure's "Dropbox" is probably identical to their competitors'. Can "Fun" be objectively assessed? I doubt it. It's just confusing when you start off with important features such as security & privacy.

Why do I feel they cheapened that proposition by throwing in "Fun"?

Jugurtha4• 13 years ago

Exactly. Here it is verbatim "We like what Dropbox and SkyDrive do but where is the privacy and fun?". And I thought : "Are you kidding me?".

Like we're supposed to play with balloons and dance when uploading/downloading files and be all smiley. Fun ? Seriously ! I don't want it to be fun, I want it to be effectively done.

The promo video is really clumsy. Accusing a service of lacking privacy (how do you know?) and fun (really?) and furthermore, failing to tell how their service is more private (and fun?) just is clumsy.

Newbie marketing tactics, too: In my experience, the companies that accuse competitors' products of sucking, and fail to show how their own products are better aren't that great.

- How do they know Dropbox isn't fun ? I find Dropbox great for what I want it to do.

- How do they know Dropbox isn't secure? And claiming theirs is, how do we know it really is and not just a claim. In other words, if I were to ask folks at younited: What is Dropbox not doing that you are. Don't give me "not secure" answers, get technical. If they don't, it's just defamation.

How do you measure privacy and security? Is there really anything secure .. I always found that talking in absolutes really shady when it comes to security. I uninstalled McAffee ages ago after seeing a pop-up saying "total security" or something like that.

How can you guarantee privacy and security, when there are back-doors in the hardware itself. Then there's the user education (which you shouldn't count on), then there are the lines, then the ISP, and a whole bunch of routers and nodes and networks where the information passes.

pasiaj• 13 years ago

Well, not being under US jurisdiction helps a bunch. Finland has no (publicly known) questionable ties to US based or other intelligence services.

The problem, of course, is that the international data cables to/from Finland go through Russia and Sweden. The former probably has no legal obstacles inspecting all web traffic and the latter is a known partner with the US/NSA in data inspection/gathering.

I think there is a huge opportunity for a more secure cloud storage application with stringent design that provides no access to the data to the organization providing the service. Unfortunately F-Secure did not implement this, but instead created a service that provides 'automatic virus inspection for your files'. That is just too close to 'automatic general inspection of your files' for my taste.

Jugurtha4• 13 years ago

I hear you. Personally, I don't need "automatic virus inspection' of my files. I know what I'm uploading. I'm the first person I think about sharing my files with. Most of what I keep is thesis related (documentation, code, articles, etc...). I store files on Dropbox, and e-mail myself thoughts I have not to forget, links, etc.. I used to e-mail myself files, too, but Db took care of it.

Maybe I fail to see the benefit since I don't have an iPhone and I'm not on iTunes.. And even then, isn't there a Dropbox mobile app ?

I might be just not getting it.

dbags• 13 years ago

My main issue with Dropbox is that they aren't trustworthy.

How Dropbox lost my trust:

1) they flat-out lied in their promotional materials. They falsely claimed that data was kept encrypted and that they couldn't access it. They stopped claiming this only after a third-party revealed that it was a lie.

2) The CTO's reactions to major security flaws made crystal clear that he does not view loss exposures as a problem unless you suffer a loss.

3) The CTO's reactions to major security flaws made crystal clear that Dropbox prefers sweeping problems under the rug to transparency.

This has created a situation where a reasonable person can't ever really trust Dropbox.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/ -- nice summary of Dropbox's flagrant lies about encrypted data.

shadowmint• 13 years ago

F-Secure have been selling locked down rebranded dropbox clones for some time now; it's a little ironic to be all 'we believe in freedom' suddenly.

(For example, a typical custom client would let you 'backup' your content from one device to the the cloud. No sharing, no multi-device sync, can't backup those video files because those might be infringing some kind of copyright).

nodata• 13 years ago

How is it ironic?

nallerooth2• 13 years ago

Where's the linux client?

egorpe• 13 years ago

There's none. Welcome to the world of bullshit. Dropbox all the way.

nallerooth2• 13 years ago

Personally, I prefer SpiderOak. It's secure, and it works on all my devices.

junto• 13 years ago

I like the idea. I like the idea that the app is device agnostic. I especially like the idea that the data is private.

However I can't see any information to back the privacy claim:

- Is the data encrypted on the client so that F-Secure (and the NSA / GCHQ / <Insert Orwellian agency here>) cannot access my data?

- Are the servers outside the United States?

- Is the corporation outside the United States?

I'm guessing the answer to all the above questions is 'no'.

skrebbel• 13 years ago

On the bottom of the front page, they somewhat answer your second and third question.

Younited is created and hosted by F-Secure in Finland. We believe in people’s right to privacy. No spying. No backdoors.

mopoke• 13 years ago

For the last 2:

"Younited is created and hosted by F-Secure in Finland."

glennos• 13 years ago

"We welcome other clouds."

Does anyone else loath the overuse/misuse of "cloud" by marketing departments?

Jugurtha4• 13 years ago

Buzz-words and graphic design is like alcohol and barbiturates. Soon, someone will coin the expression "cloud measuring contest" and you'll actually hear people say "My cloud's better than yours".

Haul4ss• 13 years ago

So the solution to multiple incompatible cloud storage providers is... to introduce another cloud storage provider?

yaddayadda• 13 years ago

obligatory xkcd - http://xkcd.com/927/

noyesno• 13 years ago

There's a bit more information available via a Finnish tabloid Iltalehti [1]:

1. It's based on a freemium model where you get 5 Gb of space for free and pay for more space/features.

2. The service is hosted in two different cities in Finland.

3. They use 256bit AES encryption

4. Other services include automatic malware scan of content (no clarification if this is done at the client end or at the server).

[1] http://www.iltasanomat.fi/digi/art-1288604696795.html

hengheng• 13 years ago

How do you automatically scan for malware in AES-256 encrypted files?

I am asking because Deutsche Post is offering something they call "E-PostBrief", which is seemingly encrypted but features a mandatory man-in-the-middle attack which is called 'malware scanner'. It's a joke honestly.

andrewcooke2• 13 years ago

how do scanners normally work? i would have thought simple ones check hashes. if so, it's no different...

jsnell• 13 years ago

The obvious solution would be to scan client-side.

Touche2• 13 years ago

I've been using a Dropbox alternative for years: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_dav.html

carlesfe• 13 years ago

Can you please elaborate a little bit more on the key similarities/differences/drawbacks between Dropbox and a home-hosted DAV server? Thanks

Touche2• 13 years ago

Drawback: You have to control your own data. Advantage: You have control of your own data.

gnur• 13 years ago

Nothing new really, without more details it's really just dropbox/drive/etc but hosted in Finland. The only file sync that actually looks interesting to me is btsync, mostly because it is on your own devices only and it used the Bittorrent for file transfers, something I know from personal experience is very efficient.

marcuspovey• 13 years ago

Hmm.. that's nice, but I don't care, this NSA/GCHQ nonsense has burnt me for cloud computing, sorry.

What needs to happen is that the market heavily punish, and legal teams sue back into the stone age, those companies that collaborated. Then we need some legal structure in place that is a little more than "we promise we won't screw you".

It doesn't matter that this lot are based in Finland, because unless there is a heavy price for collaboration, the second they get big, the government of [insert jurisdiction here] will pressure them to turn data over and there will be little incentive to push back.

icecreampain• 13 years ago

There is a perfectly legal and effective way of punishing NSA-collaborating companies: don't use their products.

I have a server with OwnCloud which I use for file and calendar sharing. Don't pay for the server and don't have my info stored at the NSA. Problem solved.

Now please don't tell me that you want to punish NSA-collaborators... and yet use a Microsoft or Apple box.

balabaster• 13 years ago

We need cloud-like tools, but we need them to be open source and secure. The question is, can you trust that data stored on an online service is as secure as you're led to believe?

olegp• 13 years ago

I guess I should add them to the https://starthq.com SaaS directory now. Funny that both the StartHQ story (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6475451) and F-Secure announcement are on the front page at the same time.

Disclaimer: F-Secure sponsored HelsinkiJS which I run & I demoed StartHQ cloud search there a month ago - it's nice to have a tight community here in Finland.

PS. It's also nice to see something other than mobile games coming out of here.

d2s• 13 years ago

At least they are using font very similar to Comic Sans.

ringmaster• 13 years ago

It's ownCloud, but SaaS. Wait... That IS Dropbox.

InTheSwiss• 13 years ago

That video is awful. Other than some ballons with the Apple and Android logos on and a very vague voice over it could have been for anything.

They should have gone with the cute little "hand drawn" diagrams/animations that have been quite popular over the past few years. At least that way they can show me what this service does.

jrs235• 13 years ago

No pricing? Not gonna waste my time giving my email address...

Does not having any pricing info turn anyone else away too? Does anyone know what their pricing is like?

Younited - all your content 100% alive

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