Younited - all your content 100% alive
younited.com
younited.com
1. It's based on a freemium model where you get 5 Gb of space for free and pay for more space/features.
2. The service is hosted in two different cities in Finland.
3. They use 256bit AES encryption
4. Other services include automatic malware scan of content (no clarification if this is done at the client end or at the server).
I am asking because Deutsche Post is offering something they call "E-PostBrief", which is seemingly encrypted but features a mandatory man-in-the-middle attack which is called 'malware scanner'. It's a joke honestly.
The only way you're going to scan aes encrypted files is before they are encrypted.
What needs to happen is that the market heavily punish, and legal teams sue back into the stone age, those companies that collaborated. Then we need some legal structure in place that is a little more than "we promise we won't screw you".
It doesn't matter that this lot are based in Finland, because unless there is a heavy price for collaboration, the second they get big, the government of [insert jurisdiction here] will pressure them to turn data over and there will be little incentive to push back.
I have a server with OwnCloud which I use for file and calendar sharing. Don't pay for the server and don't have my info stored at the NSA. Problem solved.
Now please don't tell me that you want to punish NSA-collaborators... and yet use a Microsoft or Apple box.
(For example, a typical custom client would let you 'backup' your content from one device to the the cloud. No sharing, no multi-device sync, can't backup those video files because those might be infringing some kind of copyright).
Disclaimer: F-Secure sponsored HelsinkiJS which I run & I demoed StartHQ cloud search there a month ago - it's nice to have a tight community here in Finland.
PS. It's also nice to see something other than mobile games coming out of here.
However I can't see any information to back the privacy claim:
- Is the data encrypted on the client so that F-Secure (and the NSA / GCHQ / <Insert Orwellian agency here>) cannot access my data?
- Are the servers outside the United States?
- Is the corporation outside the United States?
I'm guessing the answer to all the above questions is 'no'.
> Younited is created and hosted by F-Secure in Finland. We believe in people’s right to privacy. No spying. No backdoors.
"Younited is created and hosted by F-Secure in Finland."
They should have gone with the cute little "hand drawn" diagrams/animations that have been quite popular over the past few years. At least that way they can show me what this service does.
Or is the fact they made a dubsteppy video of young people dressed funny performing weird contortions going to make me sign up ?
I fail to see the problem there is to solve here. It also presupposes other services aren't secure (no back-doors, etc...).
From a functional/feature point of view, F-Secure's "Dropbox" is probably identical to their competitors'. Can "Fun" be objectively assessed? I doubt it. It's just confusing when you start off with important features such as security & privacy.
Why do I feel they cheapened that proposition by throwing in "Fun"?
Like we're supposed to play with balloons and dance when uploading/downloading files and be all smiley. Fun ? Seriously ! I don't want it to be fun, I want it to be effectively done.
The promo video is really clumsy. Accusing a service of lacking privacy (how do you know?) and fun (really?) and furthermore, failing to tell how their service is more private (and fun?) just is clumsy.
Newbie marketing tactics, too: In my experience, the companies that accuse competitors' products of sucking, and fail to show how their own products are better aren't that great.
- How do they know Dropbox isn't fun ? I find Dropbox great for what I want it to do.
- How do they know Dropbox isn't secure? And claiming theirs is, how do we know it really is and not just a claim. In other words, if I were to ask folks at younited: What is Dropbox not doing that you are. Don't give me "not secure" answers, get technical. If they don't, it's just defamation.
How do you measure privacy and security? Is there really anything secure .. I always found that talking in absolutes really shady when it comes to security. I uninstalled McAffee ages ago after seeing a pop-up saying "total security" or something like that.
How can you guarantee privacy and security, when there are back-doors in the hardware itself. Then there's the user education (which you shouldn't count on), then there are the lines, then the ISP, and a whole bunch of routers and nodes and networks where the information passes.
> What is Dropbox not doing that you are.
I think the technical answer is that younited is aggregating your data across accounts such as Facebook, Dropbox, Picasa, etc. Dropbox doesn't do that, and it is actually nice to have all my data in one place.
However, IMHO, having everything in one place dramatically increases the responsibilities of that "place". And I don't think a simple "we promise we won't share your data with governments" is strong enough to gain our trust. After all, companies do change their ToS...
The problem, of course, is that the international data cables to/from Finland go through Russia and Sweden. The former probably has no legal obstacles inspecting all web traffic and the latter is a known partner with the US/NSA in data inspection/gathering.
I think there is a huge opportunity for a more secure cloud storage application with stringent design that provides no access to the data to the organization providing the service. Unfortunately F-Secure did not implement this, but instead created a service that provides 'automatic virus inspection for your files'. That is just too close to 'automatic general inspection of your files' for my taste.
Maybe I fail to see the benefit since I don't have an iPhone and I'm not on iTunes.. And even then, isn't there a Dropbox mobile app ?
I might be just not getting it.
How Dropbox lost my trust:
1) they flat-out lied in their promotional materials. They falsely claimed that data was kept encrypted and that they couldn't access it. They stopped claiming this only after a third-party revealed that it was a lie.
2) The CTO's reactions to major security flaws made crystal clear that he does not view loss exposures as a problem unless you suffer a loss.
3) The CTO's reactions to major security flaws made crystal clear that Dropbox prefers sweeping problems under the rug to transparency.
This has created a situation where a reasonable person can't ever really trust Dropbox.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/ -- nice summary of Dropbox's flagrant lies about encrypted data.
Does not having any pricing info turn anyone else away too? Does anyone know what their pricing is like?
Does anyone else loath the overuse/misuse of "cloud" by marketing departments?