News User says access to ’30 years of photos and work’ in OneDrive denied by Microsoft, can't get a response after filing form 18 times — 'Microsoft sus...

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How did this guy not have a single person that he knew?!
Give the drives to some family member or anybody to hold.
Make a few gmail accounts, each one is 15gb free storage, make a second copy there.

But the issue was probably that he moved so his IP changed and if they moved without their original PCs (logical conclusion of not taking you hard drives with you) then all of the hardware changed, and if somebody tries to connect to your onedrive from a different IP and with different hardware then you want onedrive to be cautious about it.
He probably ignored warnings about IP having changed and tried to connect to it several times until he got locked out.
 
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This guy had "30 years of irreplaceable photos" that he cannot work without yet in that 30 years he never had the funds to buy a single high capacity external hard drive in that time, or take the precaution of subscribing to multiple cloud services (2TB Google One $5 for 2 months promo right now) or use Gmail accounts for free as the person above mentioned, and he didn't have any family or friends to drop the drives off with or post to, and in the last few years he didn't have the resources to invest in a small, high capacity external hard drive that could fit into a pocket? Or heck, did he not have A BANK he could go to to and rent a safety deposit box for a couple of months for his drives?

And since they were so critical, did he not over time think to buy SD cards over time to keep in a slim metal case for another backup method?
 
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Alvar Miles Udell said:
This guy had "30 years of irreplaceable photos" that he cannot work without yet in that 30 years he never had the funds to buy a single high capacity external hard drive in that time, or take the precaution of subscribing to multiple cloud services (2TB Google One $5 for 2 months promo right now) or use Gmail accounts for free as the person above mentioned, and he didn't have any family or friends to drop the drives off with or post to, and in the last few years he didn't have the resources to invest in a small, high capacity external hard drive that could fit into a pocket? Or heck, did he not have A BANK he could go to to and rent a safety deposit box for a couple of months for his drives?

And since they were so critical, did he not over time think to buy SD cards over time to keep in a slim metal case for another backup method?
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As seen in the may threads about backups or file recovery, many many many people do not think of this.
We see this here every day.

And why my sig pic is relevant.
 
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Not comparable, but I have some old emails on Hotmail that have gotten corrupted. For the most part, it's nothing terribly important, but it just goes to show that these services generally don't care about your data as much as you do.

BTW, I am a paying subscriber to MS' email service. I graduated above the "free" tier, long ago.
 
bit_user said:
Not comparable, but I have some old emails on Hotmail that have gotten corrupted. For the most part, it's nothing terribly important, but it just goes to show that these services generally don't care about your data as much as you do.

BTW, I am a paying subscriber to MS' email service. I graduated above the "free" tier, long ago.
Click to expand...

That is one reason I stuck with POP3 until just a few years ago, left them on the server and had a local copy, but that doesn't work well in this age of multiple devices.

USAFRet said:
As seen in the may threads about backups or file recovery, many many many people do not think of this.
We see this here every day.

And why my sig pic is relevant.
Click to expand...

But it is the first case I can remember of a guy going from multiple hard drives to a single cloud service then immediately tossing the drives without uploading the files as encrypted folders and not even waiting a few days to see if that single cloud service didn't flag the account.
 
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I think it's easy to say that the user should have made another backup, but this is a terrible error from Microsoft. No user should be locked out of a drive they pay for, not even for infringing content, without a warning or a way to delete said content. And any user should have a means to reach humans, even if by email. It doesn't mean the user didn't follow proper backup rules (he didn't, but that's not the point), but it means that Microsoft cannot be trusted with our data.
 
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salgado18 said:
I think it's easy to say that the user should have made another backup, but this is a terrible error from Microsoft. No user should be locked out of a drive they pay for, not even for infringing content, without a warning or a way to delete said content. And any user should have a means to reach humans, even if by email. It doesn't mean the user didn't follow proper backup rules (he didn't, but that's not the point), but it means that Microsoft cannot be trusted with our data.
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Agreed.
But we do not know the details of how he came to be locked out of his OneDrive space.
 
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salgado18 said:
I think it's easy to say that the user should have made another backup, but this is a terrible error from Microsoft. No user should be locked out of a drive they pay for, not even for infringing content, without a warning or a way to delete said content. And any user should have a means to reach humans, even if by email. It doesn't mean the user didn't follow proper backup rules (he didn't, but that's not the point), but it means that Microsoft cannot be trusted with our data.
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True on Microsoft's part, they (and every service) should have a human over the appeals process and be required to tell them which part of the TOS they violated and have the violations confirmed by human eyes, especially when their TOS is written to be so vague on some fronts as to be able to classify many things as a violation and to no doubt have a very fallible "AI" classify such things.

Their stance on nudity (none allowed in any form, real or artwork), for example, could be interpreted in a way so that a photograph of Michaelangelo's David or other classical works featuring nudity, a manga with some adult panels, a Hollywood movie featuring nudity, or even album artwork from a certain Nirvana album could be called against the TOS even though all of it is perfectly legal in most of the world.
 
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I had to use One Drive for my job the last few years before retirement. Between the posts and the article, it would appear that Microsoft has access to your files and Looks at them to see if they violate their policies. Is that correct? If so I would assume people encrypt their important files before uploading them. I have many, hard drives so I don't need that service. If Microsoft is opening all your files, that is not acceptable to me. But a lot of people don't mind if their files are not private.
 
A common problem with massive corporations is they become almost completely unreachable by the average user.

They don't really care about you or your data.

Just your money. And how they can monetize your data..
 
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🔴 Microsoft has an unbroken 50-year history of deceptive and anti-competitive/monopolistic business practices, bribery & racketeering. One recent exploit involves enticing users to create a Microsoft mail account as a requirement for certain features of its Copilot assistant. After you have used the account for a while and engaged with various contacts or conducted important research in Copilot, the account will be locked under fraudulent pretenses and your data is held hostage until you provide a telephone number that compromises your identity and facilitates tracking (a.k.a. extortion). Microsoft also introduced backdoors into its Skype and Mail services for warrantless mass surveillance by governments and their contractors.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-and-microsoft-tensions-are-reaching-a-boiling-point-4981c44f

https://www.theverge.com/news/690179/microsoft-block-google-chrome-family-safety-feature
 
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Taking the reason why the person got himself banned from his account, I feel I am also becoming more wary about these cloud drive services. I used to think that it is easier to pay someone than to maintain my own NAS/ storage solution, but on the flipside, you never know if they are going through the documents stored (which they likely do) and if something may happen to your account/ contents (like in the case).
 
Dragos Manea said:
That is why i created a nextcloud server at home with 5 x 10TB drives in zfs RAID-Z2 around 10 years ago and i dont have any wories.
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Unless you replace the disks once in a while and do a complete file check as well once in a time you do have a lot of worry about.
Your disks could be looking completely fine because you haven't touched the data on it for 10 years but then when the disk accesses a file on a part of the disk that has degraded it breaks down.
 
TerryLaze said:
Unless you replace the disks once in a while and do a complete file check as well once in a time you do have a lot of worry about.
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These filesystems (ZFS and also BTRFS) have their own checksums, so you just need to "scrub" it, to catch the most likely issues. If you also use ECC memory, then the only thing you have to worry about is a software bug in the kernel or filesystem driver, or a hardware error in the CPU itself, causing an errant write that trashes some sensitive piece of filesystem state.

These same issues that can affect your home fileserver could also affect cloud services. There was a time when I lost some files in a OneDrive account I use at my job. Later, they mysteriously returned. I never knew what happened there, but I just have to hope there weren't any files that stayed permanently lost.

TerryLaze said:
Your disks could be looking completely fine because you haven't touched the data on it for 10 years but then when the disk accesses a file on a part of the disk that has degraded it breaks down.
Click to expand...
That's exactly why, no matter what filesystem you use, you should rely on a RAID and periodically "scrub" or consistency-check it. If using a filesystem with builtin checksums, you can do a similar operation that verifies the checksums at the filesystem level.

If you use a RAID (i.e. some level that has actual redundancy), then the negative outcome of a consistency check is usually to flag a disk as bad and in need of replacement, at which point the redundancy can be restored (RAID-6 maintains redundancy, even after 1 disk failed). In the case of a filesystem where some file fails a checksum test, your only option is to restore the file from a backup.

Both are ways of detecting and countering silent bit-rot. If you do neither, then your drives are a ticking time bomb. SSDs are generally worse on this front than HDDs.


BTW, I had a 5-disk RAID-6 of WD Black 1 TB drives that lasted over 10 years, without any of the disks experiencing an unrecoverable read error (which you can see via SMART). Truly legendary. After I had copied the data to a newer set of drives, I accidentally dropped one of the drives about 3.5 feet onto a hardwood floor. Just for fun, I scanned the entire disk and the fall didn't damage anything in the drive mechanics that prevented it from doing a perfect scan. I wish they still made drives like that...
 
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This is making me remember that I'm long overdue to backup the contents of my external SSD, since it's starting to get up there in age.

Back to the topic: An online solution seems like a good one since you don't have to worry about the physical media degrading, which we now see with CDs/DVDs that are failing earlier then expected. Case in point: I'm trying to update some really old media that was stored on MiniDisk (remember those?). But not just *any* MiniDisk, but the 80 minute extended version that literally nothing plays. Still trying to dig up a working MiniDisk player that can play those back so I can get the audio into Audacity so I can back up everything digitally.
 
gamerk316 said:
Case in point: I'm trying to update some really old media that was stored on MiniDisk (remember those?). But not just *any* MiniDisk, but the 80 minute extended version that literally nothing plays. Still trying to dig up a working MiniDisk player that can play those back so I can get the audio into Audacity so I can back up everything digitally.
Click to expand...
I had a minidisc player that I used just because it had a stereo powered mic input. Unfortunately, it had neither a digital output nor did I have a computer minidisc drive, so I always had to play the discs and record the analog output on my PC. Those portable minidisc recorders pretty quickly got replaced by ones that used SD cards, and now maybe even those are completely replaced by phones.
 
bit_user said:
I had a minidisc player that I used just because it had a stereo powered mic input. Unfortunately, it had neither a digital output nor did I have a computer minidisc drive, so I always had to play the discs and record the analog output on my PC. Those portable minidisc recorders pretty quickly got replaced by ones that used SD cards, and now maybe even those are completely replaced by phones.
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I'm aware. Actually managed to get a player with Digital Out, then eventually found out about both the extended MiniDisk format & the fact the player I got doesn't support it. Was going bonkers trying to figure out why I wasn't getting anything out of any output even though the player recognized and was attempting to play the audio.

But yeah: Yay for people for waiting two decades to migrate from an abandoned standard and a decade after the equipment has stopped production for deciding to backup their stuff digitally.
 
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All cloud providers must scan for illegal content. Copyrighted material might get an account banned but one will get at least a generic response on why it was flagged. BUT if the content was VERY illegal then MS might have notified authorities, locked the account in order to preserve evidence. And stayed mum when asked because of caution or an active gag order.
Hopefully this is not the scenario. But if he just dumped 30 years worth of content then he might not even remember everything that was there.
 
gamerk316 said:
Case in point: I'm trying to update some really old media that was stored on MiniDisk (remember those?). But not just *any* MiniDisk, but the 80 minute extended version that literally nothing plays. Still trying to dig up a working MiniDisk player that can play those back so I can get the audio into Audacity so I can back up everything digitally.
Click to expand...
Hmm, doesn't bell any rings for me.
02ersnd.jpg
 
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nameless0ne said:
All cloud providers must scan for illegal content. Copyrighted material might get an account banned but one will get at least a generic response on why it was flagged.
Click to expand...
That's quite a claim, as scanning for this stuff is probably rather resource-intensive. Do you have any evidence to support that? Does it include material that's publicly shared, or just everything?

nameless0ne said:
BUT if the content was VERY illegal then MS might have notified authorities, locked the account in order to preserve evidence. And stayed mum when asked because of caution or an active gag order.
Click to expand...
A warrant is a public document, in which case they should be able to produce it. As far as I know, the only case where a gag order would be involved is when a National Security Letter is issued. While the abuse of these has been documented, I'd still be very skeptical they would be used for things that have nothing at all to do with security.

Also, note that copyright infringement is a civil offense and would involve rights holders, but not police or other government authorities.
 
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