Hi Mo,
If you want to provide your own cloud service, may I highly recommend
http://www.vultr.com.
Yes, it is loads more money, at 75USD per month, but if you're going to host
Linnux images, I think you need a bit more bandwidth than either sync.com or
dropbox provides.
I have a Windows 2012 virtual server with them, but you can either have
Windows or Linnux servers, and you can increase/decrease bandwidth as you
need.
All the best
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Mobeen Iqbal
Sent: 12 March 2016 13:16
To: BCAB Discussion List <bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [access-uk] Dropbox deception, extremely annoyed!
Hello Everyone.
This email is quite long, so have a beverage handy. I've been using dropbox
for years to sync files between various devices. Its very easy to use and
extremely convenient. However, someone contacted me on Wednesday to inform
me that a link to a custom linux image i'd shared with them wasn't working
the way they'd expected. They were getting an error code 429 when accessing
the shared link page and the following message.
Error 429: This account's links are generating too much traffic and have
been temporarily disabled!
I wasn't aware that my account was using too much bandwidth when sharing
files. Dropbox had not emailed me even though I'm subscribed to all email
alerts. I had no way of checking to see which files had generated the large
amount of traffic dropbox were referring to, nor could I see when my link
sharing ability would be restored and if I'd been banned in the past. I
searched online forums and discovered other users complaining regarding the
same issue in other words, not being made aware that dropbox does have
bandwidth limits per day, not having the ability to monitor daily bandwidth
usage, and not being able to see why they'd been banned and what file had
generated the traffic!
I contacted dropbox support and received the following response from them
this morning.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Noah, Mar 11, 2:45 PM:
Hi Mo,
Thank you for contacting the Dropbox Account Security Team.
Shared links and file requests are automatically banned when they generate
large amounts of traffic and exceed our bandwidth or download limits. In
order to prevent abuse, Basic accounts are limited to 20 GB of bandwidth and
100,000 downloads per day, while Pro and Business accounts have a much
higher limit of 200 GB per day and unlimited downloads.
Please note that Dropbox does not offer a way to buy an additional bandwidth
allowance for your account.
Due to the way we track shared links and file requests, we cannot provide
information about why a particular link or file request was banned.
However, if a recipient of a shared link sends it to other users who
subsequently download it, this could account for high bandwidth usage.
Similarly,
if a single recipient downloads the shared link multiple times, each
download is counted separately for bandwidth tracking purposes. This can
also cause shared links to be banned.
If a requester receives a large number of uploads of files by one user or
multiple users, this could account for high bandwidth usage. This could be
due to one recipient re-uploading a file often or if a recipient forwards
the file request email to other users who subsequently upload files.
Shared links and file requests are banned temporarily (1 day for the first
time) and will be restored when the ban has expired.
Regards,
Noah
So basically it doesn't tell us much at all. I am not in the habit of
broadcasting public dropbox links on forums. I think its despicable that
dropbox don't make it clear to their users that their accounts could be
limited, and also that when a limit is applied which files caused them to be
banned. or even that the account has had limits placed upon it.
this experience has left a really sour taste in my mouth, and also led me to
question how secure my data actually is. I'm switching to another, more
secure provider. sync.com is looking very good at the moment. I am currently
in the process of trying out their windows client. It seems accessible
enough with some jaws curser work in the preferences. I didn't want others
to get sucked in by dropbox's false promises. Its awful that they have the
right to access your files at any time and that they hold the encryption
keys to allow law enforcement to access your private documents at any time.
I would never put anything private in the cloud, but that's besides the
point. Individuals and business users often want to store letters, contact
information and documents so they're backed up in case of a computer crash.
sync.com claim to provide a fully encrypted service end to end and claim
that they do not hold any keys to allow others to access your data. they
also do not restrict bandwidth usage as far as I can see and offer 500GB of
storage for $49 per year and 5GB for free. Lets hope they live up to their
claims and that they're as reliable as dropbox. If I had a fast enough
connection, i'd host my own cloud.
all the best,
Mo.
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