Tell HN: Amazon Cloud Drive is banning encrypted content and backup data

https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/cloud_sync lists a bunch of other backend service providers in addition to Amazon Drive. From my experience, Backblaze is dirt cheap; I moved all my personal backups via Arq from S3 to B2 a number of years ago.

Yev from Backblaze here -> We're definitely a good repository for all of that data. Happy to have you :)

I always liked you guys, glad you're still doing well.

Thanks for the kudos! We've been seeing a lot of talk about this today - I'm glad we can be there for folks now that they need us :D

... [rest of email]

For other files:

1. If you haven’t already, download the Amazon Cloud Drive app. Or, you can use the web version by visiting: https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive.

Check to see if your content includes encrypted files or special file formats. If your files are encrypted, you’ll need to save the content in a different format. More information on how to access backup and encrypted data has been provided by Synology and can be found by visiting: https://sy.to/rogvp

2. Upload your unencrypted content to Amazon Drive, using the app or website.

After completing these steps, you’ll be able to access your content even after access to Drive by Synology Cloud Sync and Hyper Backup are discontinued.

We understand this may be a difficult adjustment, and apologize for any inconvenience.

Thank you, Amazon Photos and Drive team

It doesn't seem like amazon cloud drive is banning encrypted data based on this.

It sounds like Synology will no longer be able to back up to Amazon Cloud Drive and so they are suggesting Amazon Photos as an alternative for photo/video data, but Amazon Photos won't work for encrypted data.

Edit: Based on your followup comment it looks like this isn't the case, but maybe they're actually talking about encryption performed using the existing synology software?

[edit - put quote back in context; they repeated the part I copied verbatim for Amazon Photos and for Amazon Cloud Drive]

> For other files:

> 1. If you haven’t already, download the Amazon Cloud Drive app. Or, you can use the web version by visiting: https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive. Check to see if your content includes encrypted files or special file formats. If your files are encrypted, you’ll need to save the content in a different format. ...

> 2. Upload your unencrypted content to Amazon Drive...

You’ve just removed the relevant context of that quote that they were referring to.

Thanks. Fixed.

@dang/mods, can this be re-titled? The original title is somewhat inflammatory ("Tell HN: Amazon Cloud Drive is banning encrypted content and backup data") and not strictly accurate. I suspect that's why it was flagged off.

This is an understandable mistake--the OP cites an email that discusses removing encrypted content--but that appears to have been poor communication on Amazon's part that Drive is intended as a photo storage service, not a generic filestore.

Seems like they are banning third party apps rather than encryption. It does talk about encryption but I think it's more because the encrypted data will be useless if your Synology NAS can no longer connect and decrypt it.

This is becuase amazon is moving to storing photos/videos only, not arbitrary files.

Seems like the real story is that Amazon feels like it can tell you what software you can use to manage the storage you've bought.

Hmm -- I wonder the legality around banning of encrypted data storage on the cloud (not clear if amazon is actually banning it here, but sort of smells like it could happen).. if they ban it, the basic implication would be that your data is somehow expected to be parsed / inspected / analyzed by some algorithm or the government etc. Are there providers out there that have tried to ban having encrypted data on their servers and thats considered ok in US / EU for example?

I think the main reason here is cost since you can’t dedup encrypted data.

I can understand them wanting to limit people abusing drive to dump backups to, but if I have an encrypted winzip file what are they going to do - delete it? Seems a bit heavy handed, also a bit creepy that they are rummaging through looking for content of specific types. Talk about dropping a mask.

I’ll also second Backblaze B2 - works a treat and the pricing is very reasonable. And they actually encourage you to encrypt your content before sending it to them :)

I guess the "banning encrypted content" is coming from the instructions to decrypt and upload unencrypted content? It sounds to me more like they are providing these instructions because without Synology users would not have their encryption managed anymore, and so uploading encrypted data would result in losing the ability to access the data.

I don't see anything saying they are banning uploading, say, an encrypted ZIP file.

I tried a trial of Amazon Drive (“unlimited” storage! Awesome) and realized everything that (ab)used it was unofficial and the web UI was so hokey it was obviously not a trustworthy solution for non media assets.

I ran a lot of calculations and given I had to store terabytes of data, it ended up being cheaper to buy a server with a lot of HDD slots (I have gigabit at home)

I’m using the synology sync to back up my Amazon photos to my NAS (and then back that up to Backblaze)... sounds like it won’t be possible any more?

I use Glacier Backup on my Synology to back up to Amazon Glacier - will this be affected or is it only Amazon Cloud Drive?

Looks like only Drive. Presumably they priced Drive based on being able to de-duplicate incoming data. Glacier is a fancy tape drive robot as a service; they're much more concerned with access frequency than data volume.

Do other Cloud providers allow encrypted content and data?

other cloud storage providers don't care. this appears to be a misunderstanding though, and amazon cloud drive also doesn't care.

rather, the suggested alternative of amazon photos does not allow encrypted data, only photo and video content. which is a totally normal restriction for a photo hosting service.

HN made me cut the email in two. They've added the same restrictions to Amazon Cloud Drive (see my other comment...)