A LibreOffice developer has shared his experience of having his Microsoft account banned, and how the company has been uncooperative in helping him recover it.
On the 17th of last month, Reddit user u/deus03690 shared how Microsoft locked their account, which, among other things, contained 30 years of “irreplaceable photos and work” on OneDrive.
Who the Fuck is so stupid to store important information online without an offline backup?
If you’re not a computer nerd, it’s common to think Microsoft has a bunch of backups and that’s the whole point of the cloud. He’s not particularly stupid, he just got scammed like thousands of others.
In a just world, he’d successfully sue MS for damages.
It is not about whether a cloud provider has the necessary failure prevention techniques. This is about sovereignity over your own data.
If you store your data in a cloud, and it is not your cloud, then the owner of that cloud can cut off your access to this data at any time. With the usual contracts, your means to counter such moves are moot at best.
Having important data in your own hands is vital. I do not put data on the net that i cannot afford to lose - either, I don’t care (e.g. like the contents of this post, if it gets deleted, I’m not hurt), or I do have the data here, in my own home, on my own servers, on my own backups.
You’re right of course, but look at this like someone who’s not a nerd. You don’t have to maintain your own car. You don’t have to cook your own meals. You don’t have to fix your own plumbing or electricity. If you get sold a lemon, or were fed spoiled food, or your apartment is unlivable, then it’s not really your fault and you often have legal recourse.
But you do have to learn a lot about the computer, and if you do it wrong everybody just calls you stupid. I’m lucky it’s not like that for dancing.
This guy is a LibreOffice developer. He should be smarter than the average Internet Idiot. By far. By all means, he should know not to trust Microsoft.
And comparing this to maintaing a car or house is comparing apples and oranges. In those cases, I have rather clear legal means to get my rights. Online, not so much. And even worse for those living outside the US.
I’d even call him/her an idiot. Assuming the “30 years of irreplacable data” means that he/she is around on the internet for at least half the time, even this person should have learned from many cases like this that online only storage is not viable, especially for important data.
Lemmy tends to forget that we’re almost exclusively computer nerds. I’ve been the voice to my family and friends (hopefully not to a religious point lol) about these such issues, and they’re generally pretty receptive. But they aren’t going to go out of their way to learn what I have, nor should they. I am merely my network’s trusted IT pro, be it game servers for friends or most recently Immich for extended family.
If claiming our digital rights is framed as a free for all, we will never secure any protection before it’s too engrained to object. Together, hell look at Lemmy itself, we can not only educate people on these issues, but be the IT role that actually knows how to run whatever service in a secure and truly private manner.
PS I have to give Immich some love here, no matter how many stories like OP’s you show to someone, they aren’t going to settle for less. And now that Immich is an option for my network, its features make it barely a question for those moving off of google. Another TB of storage? That will be 40$ one time. No nags, no bullshit. And the context search is freaking amazing, without ever having to train some corps model off of (more) of your images.
Its still stupid to trust anyone with your only copy of your important data, who can just disable your account in an instance without thinking twice about it.
Who the Fuck is so stupid to store important information online without an offline backup?
If you’re not a computer nerd, it’s common to think Microsoft has a bunch of backups and that’s the whole point of the cloud. He’s not particularly stupid, he just got scammed like thousands of others.
In a just world, he’d successfully sue MS for damages.
It is not about whether a cloud provider has the necessary failure prevention techniques. This is about sovereignity over your own data.
If you store your data in a cloud, and it is not your cloud, then the owner of that cloud can cut off your access to this data at any time. With the usual contracts, your means to counter such moves are moot at best.
Having important data in your own hands is vital. I do not put data on the net that i cannot afford to lose - either, I don’t care (e.g. like the contents of this post, if it gets deleted, I’m not hurt), or I do have the data here, in my own home, on my own servers, on my own backups.
You’re right of course, but look at this like someone who’s not a nerd. You don’t have to maintain your own car. You don’t have to cook your own meals. You don’t have to fix your own plumbing or electricity. If you get sold a lemon, or were fed spoiled food, or your apartment is unlivable, then it’s not really your fault and you often have legal recourse.
But you do have to learn a lot about the computer, and if you do it wrong everybody just calls you stupid. I’m lucky it’s not like that for dancing.
This guy is a LibreOffice developer. He should be smarter than the average Internet Idiot. By far. By all means, he should know not to trust Microsoft.
And comparing this to maintaing a car or house is comparing apples and oranges. In those cases, I have rather clear legal means to get my rights. Online, not so much. And even worse for those living outside the US.
Fair, I was referring more to u/deus03690.
I’d even call him/her an idiot. Assuming the “30 years of irreplacable data” means that he/she is around on the internet for at least half the time, even this person should have learned from many cases like this that online only storage is not viable, especially for important data.
Lemmy tends to forget that we’re almost exclusively computer nerds. I’ve been the voice to my family and friends (hopefully not to a religious point lol) about these such issues, and they’re generally pretty receptive. But they aren’t going to go out of their way to learn what I have, nor should they. I am merely my network’s trusted IT pro, be it game servers for friends or most recently Immich for extended family.
If claiming our digital rights is framed as a free for all, we will never secure any protection before it’s too engrained to object. Together, hell look at Lemmy itself, we can not only educate people on these issues, but be the IT role that actually knows how to run whatever service in a secure and truly private manner.
PS I have to give Immich some love here, no matter how many stories like OP’s you show to someone, they aren’t going to settle for less. And now that Immich is an option for my network, its features make it barely a question for those moving off of google. Another TB of storage? That will be 40$ one time. No nags, no bullshit. And the context search is freaking amazing, without ever having to train some corps model off of (more) of your images.
Its still stupid to trust anyone with your only copy of your important data, who can just disable your account in an instance without thinking twice about it.
Millions of people sadly