Google Removes ‘Pirate’ URLs from Users’ Privately Saved Links::undefined
Man, they really want you to use Firefox
I can’t imagine depending on Google to store anything. They shouldn’t be able to even see what links you save.
Yeah, this is incredibly intrusive
As someone who just converted from Chrome to Firefox 1-2 months ago: what alternative can you recommend to Google Drive? I wouldn’t miss everything from it, but being able to easily share data (so that they can play videos, audio files or documents without having to manually download them) is one of them.
EDIT: and maybe Google Photos. Mainly for syncing.
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Thanks for the idea. I’m mainly looking for storage that I could access even if I blow up my house.
This.
I invested in my personal infrastructure a bit. Bought an old retired Dell R710 server for $100, installed proxmox on it. Nextcloud is basically a one-click install using a Turnkey Linux container.
My setup clearly isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve got $100 to spare for some hardware and aren’t afraid of running your own server, proxmox is free and crazy powerful.
For storage, for free options I’d recommend filen.io, which gives you 10GB free. If you’re open to other paid options, proton drive and infomaniak drive seem alright.
Just skimming the alternativeto entries for google photos, the open source alternatives to Google photos look like they tend to be either paid or self hosted. Stingle Photos has a free 1GB tier you could try out. Otherwise, paid options include Stingle, ente, and seafile, and self hosted options include immich and Nextcloud (which is also a drive alternative).
Wow, thanks for the detailed answer! I wouldn’t mind a paid service as long as it’s not significantly more expensive than what Google can offer. However, I’m a bit more conscious regarding data security. I checked on mega.io and I’ve read mixed opinions.
Depends on how much effort you want to put into it. Nextcloud is the closest in terms of features but you’ll need to set it up.
I have a ProtonDrive account and I like it but it doesn’t have auto upload of photos. You need to manually upload them. I’m personally fine with this since 90% of my photos are receipts and junk.
I’ve switched over to Proton for email, calendar and drive. I still haven’t found a replacement for Google Photos but I’m looking for one.
Protonmail has smaller cloud storage, but you have to pay for it. A thumb drive will work.
I use Sync.com for years (since 2015 after my very privacy heavy swiss cloud service shut down). It’s Canadian, the end-to-end encryption (on device,upload and cloud) is the highest I encountered and it’s extensive zero-knowledge policy was my reason to sign up.
They added some nice sharing features with quite the extensive control and easy Setup. So might be worth checking out.
And obligatory referral link for a free account 🙃:
Mega.io created by Kim Dotcom is (mostly) open source.
I wouldn’t trust anything involving fucking Kim Dotcom lmao
I’ve read some concerning stuff about him. The usual counterargument was that the source code was still open/public, but I can imagine he could still do nasty stuff to the plain data if he wanted to.
Thanks, I will take a look.
My work, which is supposed to keep things private for customers, stores so much on Gmail and Google Drive. It’s comical to me.
This feels like a corporation complying with their obligations under the DMCA.
To maintain their safe harbor status, companies have to remove allegedly infringing content in response to a properly filed takedown notice. This does include links stored in google’s search results. This is what a company like google has to do when storing user data on servers in any country that signed the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
They don’t seem to be doing this in a malicious way. They have done their duty and removed the offending links from their service. But they quite kindly chose to notify the user by email, including the exact URL that was removed. The user can store that link elsewhere.
It would have been far easier to remove the link silently.
See, this is why I like reading comments. Cooler heads prevail. Thank you for the context.
They shouldnt be reading and playing with things privately stored. Are they going to go through all my documents to replace any swear words? It’s completely inexcusable. Private doesn’t mean private until some big company asks about it wtf.
If that’s the case (what OP mentioned), I think it’s still the responsibility of who made those effing laws. You cannot ask a corporation to break the law to protect your privacy. But you can definitely ask your representative to protect it
It’s not an order from the president, they could easily say no and fight it.
This is google we’re talking about, there never was any privacy to begin with, and what you believed was there was always just an illusion. This was always their interpretation of the ideal and power of the internet with its “free sharing of ideas and knowledge” - they literally went with including personal data in that much like facebook and both have yet to be stopped or held accountable to start treating it as such.
And yet, I can still google torrent sites
Google search really has gone downhill. I’m using fence on my phone and it defaults to duckduckgo. Gotta say, it’s just as good, occasionally a little better.
What excuse are they using if it turns out that the takedown request was false?
Would they undelete the private user’s lists?
Would they reimburse anybody for the damage?
I think the word private in “privately saved” should be in quotes, clearly.
Remember kids - firefox was built off the netscape navigator kernel. A download for FF is a vote for the right side of antitrust history (and therefore future)
This has got nothing to do with browsers. The article is saying that if you use an online Google service to save Google search results, then when they are forced to take said search result down due to DMCA then it also is (obviously) gone from the saved collection. This could just as easily happen in Firefox if you use Google’s saved pages service, which is a bit like Pinterest. Meanwhile Chrome, like Firefox, never touches your actual bookmarks
it also removed all of my saved places from google maps. thanks i like it
I don’t think that’s related
it isn’t but nobody is going to post a news article about it so I’m just fucked
“trust me bro”
Oh boy, I’m feeling ultra smug now. Been using a Keepass database synced via Syncthing for about 3 years now
I use it too…but I like to spell it KeepAss.
Thank you dear friend, I’ll be using that from now on as well. KeepAss!
Lucky I know the URL to pirate bay
Assholes.
ITT: nobody actually reading the article
Initially, it was suggested that this removal impacted Google’s synched Chrome bookmarks but further research reveals that’s not the case. Instead, the removals apply to Google’s saved feature.
This Google service allows users to save and organize links, similar to what Pinterest does. These link collections can be private or shared with third parties.
I’m gonna give Mullvad a shot, sick of Google’s shit.
What’s wrong with Firefox?
