Say no to Google Drive
 

I put about 7 gb of pix onto Google Drive for a backup, but then decided to put my backup on a thumb drive instead, and then delete the Google Drive storage.

This turned into a major hassle. You can delete your folders, but the contents remain. You can delete files in bulk, but it is very, very, very slow, and you have to work around site programming errors that lead to hangs, and scroll through conceivably thousands of files to get them into trash, and then again when emptying trash.

Even if you wanted to keep using it, it is a major hassle. You cannot move things around or check for file duplicates as if it was a local drive, and God only knows if Google is reading your files or stealing your images and music or turning over contents indexes to the government or the Mafia.

The 15gb of free storage is not worth the extra effort. Buy a thumb drive in the pharmacy or electronics store, and you will be much happier.

I vote Mafia. :)

So just to get this right : It was okay for you to upload your photo's to Google Drive. But then when you started having problems, you started criticizing Google's security/privacy ethics?

The word hypocrite springs to mind!! :dizzy:

Ooh! unkind, I remember a rebuke from you when I was unkind to another member, pot, kettle, black!

Total Noob

You have your photos securely stored on your thumb drive and presumably on your PC as you originally described this exercise as a backup. So what's the worry?

Some years ago I stored some photos on one of these free servers as a backup, then decided I wanted my backup somewhere that I owned, so I copied them from my PC to my alternate storage. They are still on the free server somewhere, I have no idea where, nor do I have any interest in finding out, I have forgotten any username or password. The photos were my amateur attempts at photography, nothing of any value or secrecy. In fact till you brought this subject up, I'd forgotten about them, I expect I'll soon forget again.

Does it matter?

Online backup SEEMS like a good idea... until you start storing more than a gigabyte... or dozens of gigabytes.. then trying to restore from such a backup, not only chews up possible bandwidth allotments from an ISP, but can take DAYS or even WEEKS. With local backups, it's just a matter of hours most of the time.

And yeah.. I detest Google/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook/Twitter/Samsung/Sony and any other company making my personal information a tradable commodity without compensating me in the least. It's one thing to think that you aren't "secure' with one of these services, it's another to realize they are making billions from such personal information and not paying any taxes due to legal strategic loopholes. So, they aren't even helping to support the users they are getting rich off of.

If the service is "free", then generally speaking it is safe to say you are not the customer, you are the product.

As long as you go into the arrangement with that understanding in mind, the amount and accuracy of the personal data you supply is within your own control.