I can recommend MediaFire so far everything went great there. However, I would never keep personal data on the Internet.
MediaFire - 10GB for free / File sharing and storage made simple www.mediafire.com

 

Getting hacked on Google and them being able to access some of my saved passwords for other platforms, facebook, instagram, etc is a pretty big deal in 2021.
But yes I prob wouldn't install Dropbox today if I didn't have a client who used it. It just make it easy to share things in the same folder that we both can see what's in there without going online all the time and you can put things in there and right click on the file and it can give you a link to share. Easy as. And yes still works in the same way with a Dropbox folder that syncs and copies what ever is put in that folder online.
Like you and someone else commented, it makes a copy online, it doesn't delete.

 

I used dropbox once and never again they delete your account if you don't sign in in couple of months or similar and i had no clue they do that and the rest is history literally my files where history that they once they existed

 

Did OP ever resolve this? I followed some of what happened on page 1 but it seemed to be a gigantic mess. I've read of stories similar to this with cloud storage in general.

 

The strange part is that the files got Deleted,
why would a Backup program meant to safeguard/preserve important system/user files, delete all those files afterwards?

I've never used any program like that, I'm a HDD backup kinda guy..

But it seems strange to me, even to have that option available,
or that it comes enabled by default or triggers itself without warning..

Very strange and very unsafe..

But in any case, if the files are backed in the cloud,
why not download/restore them on the PC?

 

even if it was him it only means that this can happen to everyone and it is releated to the dropbox app.

no proper application i know moves files to a WAN location and then deletes the originals.

the only thing what is his fault is that he seems to not have local backups.

but what do i know. i am a mac user, and i already dont understand why that socalled "operating system" windows 10 keeps telling me first "path too long to move this to the trash" and when i shorten the path windows tells me "file too big to put into the trash, do you want to delete right now?"

 

Last edited: Jun 3, 2021

btw, what exactly is missing? maybe your user folder is just invisible and has broken rights or something?

 

Same here I feel somewhat better updating my external drive than using cloud services. I thought it was kind of weird for them to have that option as well. If he wanted to delete the original after backup then he could just do it manually.

 

Everything you save online is unsafe.
Because of the secret services, hackers and economic espionage and the uncertainty that the server will fail or the company will go bankrupt.

 

Same here. I have never used Dropbox or One Drive myself, but isn't the whole thing about "backing up" meant to be that they COPY your files and folders onto their servers so you have a backup of them and not to actually move all of the files? If they just move them and it gets hacked you could loose all of your files anyways

I just buy (or sometimes get them for free) Samsung T5 500gb SSD drives and backup all my stuff to them. Easy, fast and safe. As long as I don't forget where I have them

 

Yup - The only files i "sync" online are ones that i want others to access, or to have acces myself away from home.

 

That's not really accurate. If you use professional storage be an AWSS3 bucket, Azure Storage, Google PCS you can encrypt everything you store with your own cryptographic PIK or RSA key. You keep your private key, the server only has the public key and can't decode the data without a check against your PK. If you are connecting and transferring and syncing your files through a keyless ssh tunnel you on an encrypted connection transferring encrypted an encrypted stream. With the fastest modern computer if some top line wanted to hard crack your key (why they would need random files from some random internet person beats the hell out of me) it would take about 12 years for a brute force crack of the key itself assuming you don't change your key at all during that process. It would be easier and millions cheaper to black bag you into the back of a van and beat the shit out of you until you tell them what they want.

You can't share files from an encrypted, it will only communicate with a terminal that can provide the proper key to connect usually an sFTP RSA_ID or SSH whatever flavor of key you like and then you need the crypto key cause the server isn't storage plain data. So there are limitations. blah blah blah.. anyways.

Economic espionage focuses on users as well, you find someone with access that is either dumb enough or greedy enough to get you past the gate or you get in with a trojan attached to an email that says ... me lov u long time <click here now> hot naked Asian and Russian women ready to sex you now. <click here now>. Or whatever variation of click bait enticement works best on your target. The problem isn't they crypto, the problem is the all the dipshits that need access and non locked down roles and permissions.

If breaking these keys was easy, the dumbfuck companies that are living in 1991 and keep getting ransomwared would just get relief from w/e government or white hat hacker. If Amazon, MS, IBM or Google go bankrupt it isn't going to happen over night you will have plenty of time to move you data.

Properly done it's akin to keeping your money in a swiss numbered account. Your money is there but if you loose those crypto keys, nobody can get it back for you. As far as the storage service is concerned you just have a bunch or random gobbledygook that is unreadable.

Storage like this isn't free, it's cheap though and you have to know what you are doing but it isn't really all that hard to do either.

 

Last edited: Jun 3, 2021

A nice detailed article from you.

Let's take a look at our world. The GCHQ secret service hangs on the submarine fiber optic cable to England and stores everything they store and how long is secret, in other countries it is similar, it is stored and monitored and that is secret, hence the name secret service, in reality we know very little about what secret services do. Edward Snowden will probably be known to everyone. Without Him we would not even know many things.

There are whistleblowers and some good hackers like the Chaos Computer Club etc. who explain the world to us.
Then there is the theft of identity from Facebook, Ebay and loads of Trojans and viruses, etc. The goal is usually people's money.
That's what we call cybercrime. Skimming at the ATM.

The question is that you should ask yourself where do I keep my personal data? Is my password safe? Can I trust my email provider? What do I do if my computer is frozen? In the end, as a private person, you will make a backup of the hard drive C: / and not save your important data on C: / but rather burn a CD / DVD BluRay or use an external drive.

You know the gullible, reckless and stupid people - you can tell by the passwords 1234 or the bank's pin number is recorded on the bank card.
I have nothing to hide. Big data - the collection and analysis of all data on the World Wide Web is in full swing. Data is the new money. And if your country has good data protection, the secret services or fraudsters go to other countries.

At the latest when you have become a victim of internet crime yourself, you ask yourself how could I have been so stupid ....

 

This is a quite common occurrence. Check Google for error 1d10t

 

Id10t Error Definition

(pronounced eye-dee-ten-tee) Technical support shorthand used to describe a common computer error caused by a user who has “no idea about what they are doing”. An id10t error is one that the user usually will not admit responsibility for. For example, if a user calls tech support claiming their password will not work, but they in fact were mistyping the password, the tech support may note the caller’s file or log the event as an id10t error.

 

One question only and there is a reason...
Was your documents folder one of your own created folders or one that came installed with the operating system?
I ask this because if the latter, whether Windows or MAC, neither like moving the location of any of their default folders and tend to give ugly warning messages if you do that must be acknowledged or cancelled. So if the latter, you must have said 'yes' to something at some point. Even if they are not default folders, there is a path for cloud backup from local to cloud for any computer system. Look at the settings. A.I's are not that smart or malicious at this stage unless you have been hacked or permission is given by the logged in user.

There is another possibility, you might have been hacked/phished and someone is deleting your files. Run a malware check.

P.S. - The point of a Cloud backup is that in case of a flood, fire, earthquake etc etc and your computer is destroyed, the files you cannot live without are live and accessible from anywhere, so what you are suggesting does not make a lot of sense for a cloud backup to destroy what it is supposed to be backing up for safe-keeping. I am not being mean, just what I know is supposed to happen.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 3, 2021

Thank you - in addition: Have I Been Pwned?
Checks whether an account has been compromised in the course of a data breach. Source: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
BreachAlarm searches the Internet for stolen passwords and warns their rightful owners. Source: https://breachalarm.com/
“Has my email been hacked?” Firefox Monitor answers this question within seconds. Source: https://monitor.firefox.com/

 

They can store all my double encrypted data if for whatever reason during duplication some of it goes across the ocean. Encryption is multiplicative so at 12 years to break the RSA key on the ssh xcom and 21 years for the 1024b pek key that is 252 years with the world's best supercomputers at costing around $3600 a minute. In 252 years IDGAF if the FSB or NSA has my useless worthless data.

The NSA collecting encrypted data that flew across the internet as plain text and keeping it is a breach of privacy but it's not a revolution in breaking cryptography.

I backup locally to NFS and externally as well to an encrypted s3 instance as explained in my first post on this thread for things that are worth backing up. I am not backing up porn or warez.

The weak point is the user and stupid passwords. Even strong passwords as weak when compared to PK auth. This is why states want backdoor to cryptographic keys, software keys are more resilient than hardware keys as well. Because there is no physical chip to JTAG or exploit, unless some major error is found the mathematics itself it is watertight outside random chance lottery strikes.

However not matter how smart or safe computers get, the big hole in security is always going to be the human element. People screaming about their privacy, while carrying around Facebook, twitter, and Instagram on their android smart phone using google maps to get directions to an office they go to everyday on the same exact route.

Even now, even if you are going through a double hop vpn as I am and your vpn doesn't keep logs, we all leak enough that if someone really wanted to get your shit it would be easier to find you physically and take if you are not in the public eye or target your machine itself for exploits than it would be to brute force proper encryption.

Regardless, back on topic. Dropbox / Gdrive all free shits are not a good idea for backing up data. One shouldn't use them as anything other a large file sharing service through a browser. One should never install free apps on a computer they want to be secure unless it's opensource and you know what you are getting into. Free shit is never free.

Dropbox is kind of crap. The only thing it has ever been good for sharing large files with someone else. If anything erases files from your computer and you are sure there wasn't a setting to delete after backup, then delete that shit.

 

I chose not to go the pebcac or error 1d10t path and thought on the innocence path first. Innocent mistakes and hacking do happen.
There are some malicious assholes out there who do things just to be nasty. So while I am confident O/S folders cannot be moved without permission being given, malicious hacking is the only path I know of where a user can be oblivious to something happening until it is too late.

 

Very competent - thank you.
Do you have a recommendation on how to protect your email inbox? Or should you maybe do without emails altogether?

 

Last edited: Jun 3, 2021