SkyDrive in Windows 8.1: Cloud storage the way it’s meant to be | Hacker News Reader

SkyDrive in Windows 8.1: Cloud storage the way it’s meant to be

arstechnica.com

34 pointsboduh51 comments

Wow, this is evil.

The Documents library even uses the SkyDrive location as its default write location, so any file saved to the Documents library will automatically go on SkyDrive.

Most office workers won't even notice this. Any time someone hits save in Word, their document is sent directly to the NSA for review. This is like the 'url bar goes to google' problem in Chrome, but 1000x worse.

In other words: Saving a document in the Documents library means sharing it with the government.

They don't seem to have created a way of completely disabling SkyDrive using a GPO (Group Policy Object)!

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/0e84...

NB woe provided a correction to this - I (perhaps understandably) confused this feature with SkyDrive for Office, which appears to be something different...

[NB woe's comment is dead, for no obvious reason]

Its better to use service from someone who follows Zero-Knowledge policy ... one such service is SpiderOak - may be there are few more ... on this platform we need to encourage to use those services so that other can notice the demand and change their policy too (though difficult but not impossible) ....

I have been with my head under a rock lately and don't know much about this NSA stuff. So please enlighten me: is there hard proof that all or some of your SkyDrive/GoogleDrive/... documents are passed directly to the NSA? Also if you're outside the US?

It has been stated that all data - this includes SkyDrive or GoogleDrive files - is available for government agencies if a warrant is issued.

In the case of being outside the US, it has been stated that the warrant is not necessary, and any communications or data between US and non US citizens is also fair game.

There is also speculation that the NSA is legally allowed access to any data transfers going through peering points out of the US, and that internal US traffic can be diverted specifically to allow this to occur.

SkyDrive in particular is very likely to be sharing this information as any link placed into a document in SkyDrive is visited by Microsoft, and any pornography or other 'invalid' content is deleted from SkyDrive. This implies Microsoft must keep records of all files you store there and the likely content of those files, and that 'metadata' appears to be freely available for law enforcement in the USA through the PRISM and similar programs.

EDIT: In addition, it is believed that the NSA pays Microsoft for access to Skype communications, and one would assume that they would also pay for access to SkyDrive data.

hmm. still a lot of "speculation/likely/...".

But no matter what, this is f*cked beyond recognition

There is also speculation that....is very likely...and that 'metadata' appears to be....it is believed....and one would assume...

Thanks for the concrete feedback. I was wondering for a sec if this was just blatant fear-mongering and imagination stretching.

Oh come on. Please, the documents Snowden revealed, if true, show all of the parents comments to accurate and with no need to be hedged by "appears".

It's even worse than what RyanZAG mentions http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/court-record... They themselves alert authorities for stuff that might be breaking the law (and they are apparently required to by the law, so the other big guys do it too)

You can always delete the file, then it'll be moved to the Memory Hole.

You cannot delete files off the cloud.

That's my point.

I hope they will use NSA logo as documents library icon to increase the irony. I wonder if SkyDrive is being partially subsidized by three letter agencies...

    "What's on the other side of that door that's always
    locked– the one next to all the servers?"
    
    "In there? Just the blind eyes we get in return for
    those .gov contracts. We keep 'em in here so they stay
    cool. If you ever happen to see a live one just leave
    'im be– the contracts say not to touch those. In fact,
    don't mention 'em. Coffee?"

Skydrive maybe not, but Skype probably is (and could be why Microsoft was so lavish in paying $8 billion a company that barely made any money on its own):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_...

Also there was some info in some recent articles about companies sharing data with the feds being paid to do so. It wasn't just the carriers, although the carriers did get paid the most.

Is this on the vanilla/out-of-the-box Win8.1 or only after you've installed the SkyDrive app or tweaked settings?

EDIT: assume you only need to sign up for a SkyDrive account. All of the desktop integration is enabled by default.

Windows 8.1 in its current state requires that you log in using an online account always [1] and provisions a SkyDrive account on login. However, even if you circumvent this or start with a local account (see [1] again), you will be signed into SkyDrive the moment you log into the windows store or any other app.

[1] This is apparently being removed in RTM.

I am a win8 fanboy, but this is unnerving. Anyway, at least in the home environment, I can still use Local user account, and just not login to Skydrive, right?

You can do but the moment you log into the Windows Store for example, it will log you into all apps including the SkyDrive one so it's all or nothing.

Also at the moment there is not an option to provision an 8.1 machine with a local account as well during the trial period. You must use an online windows account.

I see. If this will be the case, one just should be careful to not leave anything unwanted in the Documents folder?

Isn't that like writing your diary in the corner of the room where the telescreen can't see you?

Maybe, I don't know. My concern is, that I would like to continue to use Windows 8, but not Skydrive. If there wouldn't be such a possibility, I could revert to Win 7 (although I don't like this idea, since Win 8 is superior product overall).

The NSA backdoor is terrible in its own way (what business wants its documents to go straight to NSA?!), but remember this from a while ago? You now have to be careful what you keep in your own computer (privately), because if it goes straight to Skydrive, Microsoft might delete it:

> "After contact with Microsoft support he found out that his account was blocked because there was a folder on his SkyDrive that contained content which was not allowed by the code of conduct of Microsoft SkyDrive. The folder was a private folder, not shared to anyone else.

Microsoft reserves the right to suspend an account for any reason, and two months of trying to fix the issue did not result in any resolution."

http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-m...

I don't think I like the part where it mocks up your UI to look like your files have synced, but they're not actually sitting on your drive.

I've been burned enough times by "Delayed Write", where you stick a bunch of files on a USB drive, pull it out and hop in the car, while back on your machine it pops up a little box saying "Whoa! hold up! we didn't actually copy any of those files yet, even though we said we had." This seems like another version of that same idea, except this time designed to leave me without any of the music and video I'd "synced" onto my new road machine right before hopping that month-long riverboat down the Congo.

Given a choice, I think I'd prefer that my machine actually did the things with my files that I've told it to do. Copy them when I copy them, sync them when I sync them. I hope there's an option to do that here.

Haven't tried it yet but I hope the visual icons (green, blue) would help me see which files have been actually synced.

And yes, I know the USB drive scenario, I got burned myself many times.

They will delete your account if you upload pornographic images. Since your data is private, the only possble reason for this policy is to make the job of spies more comfortable. The way it's meant to be.

Cloud storage the way it’s meant to be? Without client-side encryption support? Hmm...

BTW, can someone share the experience regarding the syncing speed? Lastly I had been evaluating both Dropbox and Skydrive, I found the DB to be quicker to upload modified files - the uploading started almost immediately, which was not the case with Skydrive.

"Cloud storage the way it’s meant to be" - what a frickin joke! They should be ashamed of themselves to come up with such subjects after all that has happened!

Fair enough complaint really, but keep in mind this article is around 2 weeks old at this point.

Yes, go ahead, trust Microsoft again.

I signed up to say this. I was a SkyDrive customer. Problems I've had:

1. I uploaded a legitimate Office 2010 ISO image to it from MSDN as I was installing it on a non-corporate networked test machine (sandbox). Next day it was gone.

2. I uploaded a few purchased MP3s to it so I could transfer them to work. When I got there, they were gone.

3. I tried to cancel my account. Every cancellation page fails with "I have one or more Microsoft Billing account subscriptions active. Please stop these first". I have never had any paid subscription service and there is nothing listed in Microsoft billing.

4. Attempts to contact support have resulted in sitting on the phone for 4 hours. Email support replies with canned messages. Complaining on forums on their web site has no effect either.

You have been warned.

Don't put your data in it or deal with them, even if you don't care about the NSA stuff.

I was going to ask this; I read about their automated scanning and removing policies last year. So those are still in place? That's not really an option then.

They are definitely still in place. My problems go back only 3 months.

To add to my previous comment, I still do not have a resolution on these issues.

Asides from PRISM/privacy concerns, the integration is pretty interesting.

Well, except for the lack of Linux integration

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/skydriv...

IIRC microsoft also has auto scanning for pirated or pornographic content. So if you add an mp3 that the big boss deems illegal, it will be deleted, with a probability that your account will be disabled.

reminds me of ZumoDrive

I think I'm going to write my own cloud storage app, to use Azure Storage or something, while encrypting everything on the client.

Serious, snark-free question: is this a paid review by Microsoft? I've never been an Arstechnica reader but I thought they had more integrity than this.

Talking up SkyDrive is like extolling the virtues of ivory from elephant tusks. In both cases there is a horrible hidden cost.

"The files themselves use the reparse point mechanism first introduced in Windows 2000. During that first sync, stub files ("reparse points") are created to mimic the directory structure stored on SkyDrive. Any operation on these files is intercepted automatically, allowing SkyDrive to download the file on-demand."

Being a long-time luser, I hadn't heard of NTFS reparse points before. Somehow, every time I read something about NTFS features, it strikes me how well thought-out that FS is, especially for its time.

Prepare for some disappointment. Reparse points weren't added until Vista, and they require admin privileges to make symlinks.

Hmmm yeah, maybe it sounded more exciting than it actually is. I interpreted the description as "symlinks that transparently link to cloud storage", which sounds like quite a feat to pull off - certainly not just a trivial generalisation of unix symlinks?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_reparse_point

Seems to be from Windows 2000 according to Wikipedia.

This article is a mess. It's talking about a whole variety of NTFS redirection features, but only some of them existed in 2000. It also got me confused, I should have said 'those reparse points', not just 'reparse points'.

In 2000 you could make junction points but they only worked on directories. 2000 also supported multiple hard links to a single file. But what the article talks about, individual soft links for files, didn't get added until Vista. Despite it being a standard feature on filesystems going back decades.

I'm actually interested in this. I'm out of space on my Macbook Air, but I have gigabytes of photos that I'd like to be able to use with Aperture or Lightroom without using an external drive.

Has anyone tried a solution to mount an online server/drive/storage as a network drive in order to do the same things that this new SkyDrive will do?

I just can't trust any big corp after the whole NSA thing. Never. Period. Unless they take some very drastic steps. This looks pretty slick, but I can never use this. I hope microsoft and others are reading this. All the recent flack has seriously damaged public image, at least in the power user world.

I'm just thinking, maybe the NSA should start their own cloud storage service, cut out the middle man, you see.

Think about it, free, no size or bandwidth restrictions, and if you use encryption they'll probably keep a backup for you, forever.

Cloud storage should, first of all, be OS agnostic, secondly it should be content agnostic (meaning the provider doesn't review the content for compliance to its policies). Skydrive fails on both counts.

RMS called this "Windows: PRISM Edition" @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045421

Paid content the way it meant to be.

How Google Drive is less meant to be cloud storage?)

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