Users of Microsoft's consumer cloud service SkyDrive have had their accounts suspended for inadvertently breaking the terms of their end user agreements.
WMPoweruser reports that a user in the Netherlands, going by the pseudonym WingsOfFury
, lost access to his Windows Live account, including Hotmail and Xbox Live, after uploading 9GB of content to a private SkyDrive folder.
After asking for advice on a Dutch forum and contacting Microsoft, he was told his account had been blocked
because he had uploaded content that violated the terms of service.
The software giant would not explain what WingsOfFury had uploaded that broke the rules, only that it related to files containing nudity, partial nudity, pornography, or content
containing links to external sites that contain similar content.
And in these times of extreme PC the slightest insult can be arbitrarily deemed 'inappropriate' and the mildest picture can be seens as 'sexualised'.
Update: Dropbox: Don't trust it for anything valuable
Marco Arment is the creator of Instapaper, co-founder of Tumblr, and Internet-famous software developer. Responding to a listener question about the insecurity of Dropbox, he said:
Anything
that is really sensitive or extremely valuable or needs to be kept very secret, I wouldn't store on anybody else's servers. That, to me, seems ridiculous unless I held the encryption keys like with the online backup service that I use.
Marco makes some salient points worth repeating here for users who may not be fully aware of how services like Dropbox typically work and the ramifications of storing your data off-premise. In case you didn't realize, Dropbox holds the keys to encrypt
and decrypt your data on their servers.
This means that a Dropbox employee could theoretically view (or steal) your data. Why do they hold the keys? Dropbox isn't just online backup, it's a collaboration tool. In order to offer public file sharing
features, they have to be able to decrypt data that is stored on their servers.
They also need to be able to decrypt data for legal reasons -- if they get a DMCA takedown notice or a subpoena from the US government requesting certain files,
servers, or even racks of servers [1]. And because Dropbox hosts data for 25,000,000+ users, some of which are undoubtedly doing very bad things, the likelihood of being served with a subpoena is far greater for them than for an individual person or
organization.
Users of Microsoft's consumer cloud service SkyDrive have had their accounts suspended for inadvertently breaking the terms of their end user agreements. 