Seeking a second opinion... Is OneDrive malicious malpractice ?

gunrunnerjohn said:

Actually, on any reasonable spec computer and storage media, encrypting 200GB would not take that long at all. Go have lunch and when you come back the job can be done. I just used 7-Zip to encrypt 50GB of data using AES-256 encryption, it took three minutes. My system is an i5-14500 with a 2TB NVMe SSD.

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Well imagine it would go pretty quick on my Ryzen 7 7735HS, and Radeon 7700S, with 1TB Samsung 990 Evo Plus NVMe (Second drive) and WD SN770 512GB as Boot NVME.

Desktop specs are as follows: MSI Pro B650 VC Wifi Rev 1.0, Ryzen 7 7700X, Radeon 7800XT OC 16GB, Samsung 990 Pro 1TB Boot NVMe, Samsung 990 Pro 2TB Game NVMe, Inside a Black LIan Li Lancool 216 ARGB Case with Seasonic Focus GX 750 watt power supply

cheaterslick said:

Oh, and I'll never pay subscriptions. I will not "rent" software. I will not be a lemming, paying for the same thing over & over again. To me, that's 10 steps backwards. I stopped doing that when I gave up the 3rd party

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Back in the day, 1 copy of office professional was like $450. Im sure most didnt pay that, they usually pirated it. But if you did pay it and you wanted it on 2 computers, that would be $900. So, along comes office 365 at $99 a year. You could pay for that for a full decade before you hit the upfront out of pocket cost for 2 copies of office professional. And Microsoft sweetened the deal by bundling in OneDrive space in the subscription. You can install it on your desktop pc, your mac laptop, your tablet if you want, etc. When the new version of office comes out, you just get it as part of your subscription....no upgrade payment, etc.

I just feel for my use, the cost of this subscription is very reasonable. Its like 2 tanks of gas in my car, or 1 time for our family of 4 to eat out.

XxXxX said:

OneDrive is the first bit of Microsoft software i disable and then remove from any and all my systems after an install which is always setup for a local account. i just wont have it on any of systems. thats my personal choice others may choose differently.

best of luck Steve ..

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While I do use a local account, onedrive is one of the first things I set up on any new machine. Even on my Mac's. Its my personal file server that I don't operate out of my home. Its just always there, no matter what computer I use.

We all have different needs, wants and desires.

pparks1 said:

I think MS should have included this screen during the initial install and setup of your first user account.

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This screen, IS the screen you get if you take a box that is currently setup with a local user, and you create a new user account which IS a Microsoft account and you log in the first time. You GET the option to use OneDrive which is default, but you have the option to tick the box to "Only save files to this PC".

I just clean installed under Hyper-V to verify that this dialog box is indeed NOT present during the clean install and initial user setup.

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Again, I know that all these companies are trying to drive you to their cloud services so that you then eventually become a paying subscriber. So, even the above for me is still not good enough: Both options should have equal prominence. Moreover, as I wrote in another post, Microsoft should include something like an animated tutorial/demo to explain what OneDrive is and then it is a simple question to the user asking if they want OneDrive enabled.

pparks1 said:

True. Although the price for Microsoft 365 is outstanding. For $129 a year, you get 6 users who all get 1TB each....and the full office suite on whatever they want to install it on. Both windows and mac.

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You can also get a very capable free office suite that offers file compatibility with MS Office, it's called LibreOffice. No need to let MSC suck your pockets dry with their bloatware.

pparks1 said:

I just feel for my use, the cost of this subscription is very reasonable. Its like 2 tanks of gas in my car, or 1 time for our family of 4 to eat out.

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I don't have the need for all the wizz-bang crap that has been added to Office in the last 10-15 years. I still use my licensed Office 2010, it works just fine for what I do with Office. If I need something more current, I'll consider LibreOffice and give them a nice one-time donation. Then I'll take the family out to eat on the $100 I save every year!

Marie SWE said:

...exactly (convenience versus a security tradeoff) encryption is not meant for convenience its meant for pure security... period.. no buts.. either you have security or you dont.
You dont get something to be "almost secure".... or do you?...

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!

If I forget/lose my BitLocker Recovery Key or password then, oh well, shame on me and too bad!

If there's some sort of "convenient" backdoor to still access my data, then the service is not truly fully secure. That is, yes, although the backdoor "convenience" can be used in an emergency, then it also means that it can be used in a non-emergency by a bad actor. So, no, thank you, I'm not interested in that type of service!

pparks1 said:

I went back to look at the clean install and setup oobe really closely. it does tell you it's going to do it, in the fine print, but no real way I can see to work around it. Unlike setting up the account after the machine is up and running and getting the option to save your files directly on the PC instead.

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Yeah, if I recall correctly, the experience when upgrading a PC is vastly different and you can just select "no" to enabling OneDrive for the standard Windows personal data folders.

However, personally, when I am asked for something that I don't have, I read the entire screen and click on any links that provide me with additional information so that I can make an informed decision. So, yeah, I would have clicked on the "Learn more" link for OneDrive.

pparks1 said:

It doesnt take that long for 500MB, but it doesnt make a whole lot of sense to continously upload 500MB every single time you save a few Kb's or Mb's.

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Again, 500MB isn't that big. It doesn't take long if you have broadband or fiber. Besides, I drag and drop files in password-protected 7-zip all the time. And I use VeraCrypt locally for storage that isn't gonna change very much.

But hey, it's your files. You want people looking in on them then be my guest.

pparks1 said:

And I have 100+GB's in one drive, so that would take a whole lot longer.

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Unless your storing 2k or 4k video. Or unless you're like @TraderGary and running a business from home, I don't see how something can take up 100+GBs.

pparks1 said:

The point is that the file is a container. If you put 1 new file into the container, it has to upload the entire container again. It's not able to just sync the delta's of the file. So, if you veracrypt file is say 500MB in size, and you add in a 40k text file, it will need to upload the entire 500MB container again...

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And we should not be stuck on VeraCrypt or any other encrypted file as the only other option.

That is, I store Macrium backups and other files on OneDrive. For the Macrium backups, they are, of course, encrypted; for the other files, I zip them locally with encryption and then upload them. It's that simple and no encryption container is needed, allowing me to individually upload new/changed files to OneDrive without re-uploading everything else.

pparks1 said:

Back in the day, 1 copy of office professional was like $450. Im sure most didnt pay that, they usually pirated it. But if you did pay it and you wanted it on 2 computers, that would be $900. So, along comes office 365 at $99 a year. You could pay for that for a full decade before you hit the upfront out of pocket cost for 2 copies of office professional. And Microsoft sweetened the deal by bundling in OneDrive space in the subscription. You can install it on your desktop pc, your mac laptop, your tablet if you want, etc. When the new version of office comes out, you just get it as part of your subscription....no upgrade payment, etc.

I just feel for my use, the cost of this subscription is very reasonable. Its like 2 tanks of gas in my car, or 1 time for our family of 4 to eat out.

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That's fine. As long as everybody else doesn't have to do what you do. MS is pushing everything to the cloud and I expect in the next few years, it will be unavoidable for people like me who don't want nosy big-tech looking in at what I consider my property.

Once you upload anything to their cloud, they by de-facto own it too.

pparks1 said:

Yeah, I've never understood why they are so adamant that they want everybody to log in with their Microsoft account rather than a local account...

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Once I have you in my customer database, it opens the door for me to sell you all sorts of products and services!

cheaterslick said:

...Once you upload anything to their cloud, they by de-facto own it too.

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!

Many years ago, I ditched DirecTV for streaming; today, I have YouTube TV.

Cloud DVR is great and all; I no longer have to worry about filling up or managing the storage on my DVR. However, recordings on YouTube TV last for 9 months only, whereas on my DirecTV DVR, I had saved recordings that were many years old! I truly miss that.

gunrunnerjohn said:

You can also get a very capable free office suite that offers file compatibility with MS Office, it's called LibreOffice. No need to let MSC suck your pockets dry with their bloatware.

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Yes, I am aware. If the "only" thing that my Office 365 sub gave me for about $90 a year was Microsoft Office, I would not pay for it. But since I do make use of the OneDrive space, I've effectively paid for OneDrive and have gotten Microsoft Office for free.

You can actually use web versions of Word and Excel for free with your free Microsoft account. For my kids and such for their high school and college work, they used Google docs pretty much exclusively. Same thing for me these days trading files with friends and such, it's almost all done Google docs.

nuspieds said:

!

If I forget/lose my BitLocker Recovery Key or password then, oh well, shame on me and too bad!

If there's some sort of "convenient" backdoor to still access my data, then the service is not truly fully secure. That is, yes, although the backdoor "convenience" can be used in an emergency, then it also means that it can be used in a non-emergency by a bad actor. So, no, thank you, I'm not interested in that type of service!

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Yeah i have done that too.. I have a VeraCrypt container i used for some project testing i did, that i have forgotten the password too.. i have tried to figure it out for a year now. *LOL* ... it was nothing really important i couldn't get hold of again.. but still i try as I'm sooooo darn curious of what simple password i did use to that one. it was stupid simple like 123456 or somthing like that.. pure test as for the crappy password... So a simple password got hard. *LOL*

Otherwise I have it quite easy.. i dont encrypt my system drives as they dont contain anything of importance.. i only encrypt sensitive data

cheaterslick said:

Unless your storing 2k or 4k video. Or unless you're like @TraderGary and running a business from home, I don't see how something can take up 100+GBs.

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About 90GB of my data is the backup of my camera role from my cell phone. All the pictures and video clips that I have taken over the years on my cell phones are all up there.

Then I have about 5GB worth of licensed software that I have bought over the years which I store out there.
I have about 3GB worth of drivers for my computers that I have at home. (just in the event that cannot find a specific version at a later time)

And then lots of text files, word docs, spreadsheets, scanned documents, etc.

It all eats up space.

bikemanAMD said:

Encryption i never ever checked out for my files, i thought about it, but then never looked into it further. I doubt i'd be able to encrypt all 200GB of GameDVR videos, reuploading all that would be alot to do i think.

I may have to research the encryption aspect more, i'd be willing to do that, i typically don't forget passwords, and do have Roboform Password Manager these days

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Ok, yes, I understand but let me put things into perspective for you, hoping that it will help!

First, before cloud storage, my final resting place for backup copies of my files was my NAS. Backup program files were already encrypted and for all the other files, I would manually encrypt in various ZIP files and then move those ZIP files to the NAS. The bottom line is that all my important files were backed up in an encrypted form and on storage separate from my PC.

With the introduction of cloud storage, I initially used Amazon as my Cloud Service Provider. Then, for cost-savings purposes, I switched to Google. Not only did this mean learning and setting up a new cloud storage infrastructure, but the re-uploading of hundreds upon hundreds of GBs of files! But, at the end of the day, it was a one-time activity; painful and time-consuming, yes, but one-time.

Then, when I got Microsoft 365 Enterprise included as part of my ISP service, which included 1 TB of OneDrive storage, I switched to OneDrive. What did that mean? Once again, for cost-savings purposes, I switched my cloud storage to OneDrive and, yes, once again, it meant that painful and laborious one-time task of uploading hundreds upon hundreds of GBs of files!

My point is that if keeping your GameDVR files encrypted in the cloud is important to you, don't let the total size and time to encrypt and upload deter you, because it is a one-time activity (that is, unless and until you change your Cloud Service Provider! )

cheaterslick said:

That's fine. As long as everybody else doesn't have to do what you do. MS is pushing everything to the cloud and I expect in the next few years, it will be unavoidable for people like me who don't want nosy big-tech looking in at what I consider my property.

Once you upload anything to their cloud, they by de-facto own it too.

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Nobody has to save anything to one drive.

I historically created a D drive on my computer, and then created a folder on it called Data. So, D:\Data is where i would normally store stuff. Last 20 years or so, i've had a dedicated file server box on my home network that stored things, and I backed it up regularly, keeping 1 copy off site at all time. But that's slowly been less and less used as I now put things on OneDrive instead as that keeps a site off site and it gives me convenience of getting to it from anywhere.

But the point is, people can use OneDrive if they want and nobody has to use OneDrive if they don't want to. You just gotta put in a small amount of effort to figure out where you want to place your files.

nuspieds said:

!

Many years ago, I ditched DirecTV for streaming; today, I have YouTube TV.

Cloud DVR is great and all; I no longer have to worry about filling up or managing the storage on my DVR. However, recordings on YouTube TV last for 9 months only, whereas on my DirecTV DVR, I had saved recordings that were many years old! I truly miss that.

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Yeah, I have YouTube TV too. I find it way more useful than cable was. I can watch on my computer, on my tablet, on the phone, while I am out of town. I don't have to run coax cables through my house. I don't need cable boxes.

The convenience of getting rid of cable far outweighed the cost savings for me.

Marie SWE said:

I only reused the word backdoor from both bug-hunters and security researches as they found the incident to wired to actually be a bug and not an intentionally "bug"
So its not my opinion, But i have to tend to agree with what i read.. it seems just to easy.

Yeah.. to be sure you should encrypt the data before uploading to someone else computer... You can always host your own cloud storage, then you do have full control......... But its not fun to keep up with security when web-hosting yourself. *lol*


((Time for me to get some sleep.. its 5AM over here.. ))

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I'm with you and I'll be honest with you: I don't care about the verbiage! That is, I don't care if it is a backdoor-written code or if it is a hack or if it is a bug, etc., etc., etc.! If someone has access to my cloud data, then I have an issue with that, period, and I don't care what the verbiage/reason is! So, to not take any chances and err on the side of caution, that's why I encrypt before I upload.

Separately, ages (centuries, more like it, lol! ) ago, I was working on project at a customer that had a process to perform a daily backup of workstation files that were stored in the C:\<xxx> folder structure to some network folder. Again, remember this is "centuries" ago , and a consultant I worked with had a Palm Pilot which, for some foolish reason or the other, he would copy/sync his data (totally unencrypted) into a folder under the C:\<xxx> folder structure.

Then, the project ended abruptly and he panicked because of all the personal and sensitive Palm Pilot data he copied to the C:\<xxx> folder structure, which were subsequently backed up on a daily basis to a network drive. He was about to send an email to the IT admin to delete all those files but I stopped him, reminding him that those IT admins are not paid a lot and that his email would only bring attention to his unencrypted personal and sensitive data, so better to just leave it alone!

If it's not your storage, you have no control on who can access your data, so one needs to take all the necessary precautions possible to prevent a harmful data breach.