Ask Slashdot: Keeping My Data Mine? (2015 Edition)

New submitter schklerg writes: Like many, I am tired of being the product of the corporate "cloud" overlords. To that end, I've got my own Linux server running Tiny Tiny RSS (RSS — Feedly replacement), OwnCloud (Storage / phone backup / Keepass sync / notes — Google Drive replacement), Coppermine Gallery (picture library), Dokuwiki (quick reference), and Shaarli (bookmarks manager — Foxmarks / Sync replacement). Crashplan lets me pick the keys for my backups, and the only thing Google Drive ever sees is a pgp encrypted file of various items. Next up is moving from gmail with iRedMail. Yes, the NSA may have it all anyway, but being under less corporate control is a nice feeling. What have you done to maintain control of your own data?

Comments

9 track tape

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck on finding anyone who can read a 9 track tape...that's where I keep my data.

Re:9 track tape

[Ravaldy]

Very practical!

Re: 9 track tape

[mnemotronic]

I have an old Craig 8-track with a bonus! Three Dog Night! Maybe we can hack something up, or just ignore parity.

Re:9 track tape

[vtcodger]

The likelihood of a 9-track tape actually reading back was never very high. But you can make your backup even more secure by encrypting the data with an unknown random key prior to writing it.

Re:9 track tape

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole post reads like sponsored content.

I checked out the "iRedMail" website. I wish I didn't.

Re:9 track tape

[psyclone]

You could implement all the parts of iRedMail if you like, they're all Free Software.

Re:9 track tape

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole post reads like sponsored content.

I checked out the "iRedMail" website. I wish I didn't.

LOL NOOB (serious). Please tell me you have no technical background.

Re:9 track tape

[Anonymous Coward]

That happens to me all the time ....

  Somehow my key turns out to be unknown random.

mine?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont backup to any cloud service whatsoever. I backup to a local NAS and then use crashplan free to backup to an offsite NAS at my parents house in another city. And they do the same to my NAS. No data sitting somewhere I dont control.

Re:mine?

[Ravaldy]

And they do the same to my NAS

Crashplan doesn't support reading for network locations unless you set it up as a VHD. How did you accomplish this? The VHD was an overhead I didn't want to deal with.

Re:mine?

[SirSlud]

You can backup to other Crashplan clients.

Re:mine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I just send everything over to OneDrive. I also put a copy of all photos on my NAS and on Google Drive.

Re:mine?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does, but you have ti install it a certain way. Just install it for yourself, instead of for everyone on the computer. Map the drives to your computer from the NAS and then include those drives in your backup.

Re:mine?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/4/Backup/Backing_Up_A_Windows_Network_Drive

Re:mine?

[Anonymous Coward]

gg troll.

Re:mine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, it's "back up", not "backup". You back up your data to create a backup.

Re:mine?

[Ravaldy]

You're not getting my question. I've used Crashplan. You can't specify a network location as a location to backup. It's an administrative rights issue.

Re:mine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, it's "back up", not "backup". You back up your data to create a backup.

"Log in" causes similar cognitive difficulties

2015 Edition?

[SeaFox]

That's pretty optimistic. I'm sure we'll have a duplicate discussion about this before the end of the year.

Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

I put the stuff on my hard drive.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

I put the stuff on my hard drive.

But you're still at the mercy of "teh Corporationz" who made the hard drive!
REAL Men don't use teh EVIL Korporate Overlord hardware, we manually encode the bits on pieces of bark, which comes from trees hand-planted from Heritage seedstock, watered from sekret underground aquifers, and fertilized with our own shit. Backdoor THAT at the factory, China/NSA/GCHQ/KGB, haHA!!!

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's silly, real men need nothing but a needle, a microscope, a hex editor and a blank DVD.

I use GEOS on my Commodore 64

[Anonymous Coward]

and with my GPIB card, I can control my lab instruments too, and keep the data in GeoCalc spreadsheets.

"Cloud" that, bitches. I guess I could connect the RR-Net to the web somehow.

Nothing!

[moxsam]

What have you done to maintain control of your own data?

I did nothing and it worked. It's still all on my harddrives today. Cool, huh?

Re:Nothing!

[pr0fessor]

Try going paperless and dataless... run from a live disc, no cloud, no hard drive, or storage media, and nothing to backup. There you go.

Re:Nothing!

[celtic_hackr]

What have you done to maintain control of your own data?

I keep everything on my own fully encrypted harddrive. I use fully encrypted hdds to do backups. I have my own fully encrypted server hosted at a host provider on the backbone with email.

NSA may have all my mail as well, but I could go to encrypted mail send and receive if I wanted to. There is no need. If I needed to bypass NSA, I wouldn't be stupid enough to use my own equipment or networks.

I don't use insecure, or unverifiable, protocols and devices, like Android and iPads/iPods for anything important (like banking, logging in to remote accounts, or purchases). I use two factor security.

Re:Nothing!

[randalware]

never lost a hard drive or had a whole system get corrupted (virus,trojan,etc) ?

you lead a charmed life.

as a professional system admin ( In a former life) your data is hovering above the /dev/null file.

learn about backups...

Re:Nothing!

[war4peace]

Or so you think...
But seriously, I don't give a fuck that Google sees decent pictures of me and my family. Or reads the "A Steam product from your Wishlist is on sale" e-mails.
The whole setup in TFS has an eerie resemblance to the '80s radio setups emitting tinfoil theories from a van in the boonies, using a generator for power and being "off the grid".

Re:Nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about your Slashdot posts?

Re:Nothing!

[Coren22]

How do you boot that fully encrypted cloud server? How do you keep the encryption keys out of the cloud provider's hands?

Re: Nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

You seriously think 100% of all employees at all companies where your data is stored honor your privacy? Hahahahahahaha

Re:Nothing!

[Gr8Apes]

I've done nothing, because I haven't put anything in the cloud in the first place. The cloud is a stupid idea for things you want to keep yours and yours alone. I have multiple backups, both online and offline, including remote. Same as your former life, I learned valuable lessons without the pain. (We had weekly rotations of backup sets and sent 1 of 4 offsite, so every week we'd rotate our offsite copy. Yes, it seemed stupid at the time. It seemed less stupid when we got hit by a virus. It seemed a whole lot less stupid when another site had a fire.

Re:Nothing!

[Threni]

How much data is yours and can't be replaced? Music/movies etc is online and can only be downloaded more and more quickly. photos/videos? Well, are you keeping a lot of crap you'll never look at again? No-one else is going to look at it; when you die all that crap's going into big black plastic bags or will be formatted and used to store someone else's music. Might as well clear up all the duplicates, blurred photos, pointless video and keep the good shit - the stuff you ever want to see again - safe. USB keys are the safest bet and they're really cheap now (128 gigs for £23 and falling). Get a handful of those and as the price drops move the data onto the next size up. All your most important data can be kept literally in a small, old sock (so it's safe and dry) in a drawer somewhere.

And for fucks sake, get rid of windows (run it in a vm if you have to) and use linux so that you're safe from the whole virus/malware thing. That shit is old.

Re: Nothing!

[mnemotronic]

I don't do anything either. the Chinese govt has all my info including SSN, driver's lic #, passport #, fingerprint info, job & residence history, plus criminal, drug and alcohol history. And rehab history. And relapse history. And re-rehab history. And ... you get the picture. Disk space will be a challenge.

Re:Nothing!

[Buchenskjoll]

as a professional system admin ( In a former life) your data is hovering above the /dev/null file.

No, I use http://devnull-as-a-service.co....

Re: Nothing!

[war4peace]

No, I don't, and I don't give a fuck either way.
Privacy has its threshold too. it's equally ridiculous to put up all your life publicly on Facebook, or to be afraid that "the Man" is looking up your asshole through a hidden camera while you take a shit.
When some average private individuals go to greater lengths to protect their data than the Secret Services, it's safe to say they're just a wee bit nuts.

a Synology NAS

[Racemaniac]

I bought a Synology NAS. I've got full control of my data, and sharing it in every possible way is extremely easy. They've got a ton of good packages you can use it with, so it's just installing the NAS, configuring your router, choosing which packages you want (ranging from just file browser in your browser, to a mediaplayer in your browser, to cloud like syncs, to every possible server you can imagine (vpn, web, svn, database, email, ....)) and all fully under your control :).
It may not be open source, but it does run linux :). so even if they don't give a package, you can get it on there yourself :).
I'm very happy i made the decision to buy it, they're not that cheap, but they work very well :). I was also considering rolling my own, but it's just not worth it imo.

Re:a Synology NAS

[Anonymous Coward]

It may not be open source, but it does run linux :). /p>

GPL begs to differ. If they ship it with Linux, it IS open source.

Re:a Synology NAS

[Racemaniac]

i meant not every app/package that comes along.
the kernel is open, but the rest is not

Re: a Synology NAS

[Anonymous Coward]

First time I read this I saw "Scientology NAS" and wondered if Zemuchupacabracthulhu gets the data.

Re:a Synology NAS

[bad-badtz-maru]

And what do you do when the NAS fails? A single NAS represents a single point of failure, unless you bought a spare enclosure.

Re: a Synology NAS

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

They Audit your NAS to find all its secrets... then use them against it if it ever leaves the "church"

Re:a Synology NAS

[Dutch Gun]

You just buy a new enclosure at that point. The discs are still good, and you can migrate your data. And if you've got two brain cells to rub together, you're also backing up your most critical data remotely.

There are "single points of failure" all over the place in a home or small office. The vast majority only have a single router, a single internet connection, and a single source of power. Most homes probably only have a single computer. The only place you really don't want a single point of failure is with your data. Everything else can be easily replaced.

Re:a Synology NAS

[ColdWetDog]

You think those packages that open your Synology box to the web are safe?

http://www.secureworks.com/res...
http://forum.synology.com/enu/...

And others. I like Synology stuff, I use it. But opening anything up to the Internet isn't safe. You may have full control of your data, but so does somebody else.

Re:a Synology NAS

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo. I was actually pleasantly surprised how open sourced it is. I bought a cheapie model for stashing E-mail, and am going to go for a larger model once budget permits.

You can easily setup up on-disk encryption with eCryptFS, or you can use a backup utility like borgbackup, attic, bup, zpaq, or zbackup which has built in encryption, all the above having the ability to deduplicate.

Now, once the data is backed up as small as possible, it is finding a place to replicate that, because even a NAS with two drives can have glitches that would zero everything out. With moving a repo directory and editing a config file, the NAS can back itself up to an eCryptFS protected directory on an external drive.

You could use a cloud provider for encrypted repo data. On the Synology mode, both S3, Azure, and Glacier are supported.

Backups need to have a number of criteria:

1: It needs to be robust against disk failure. RAID1 fills this.
2: It needs to be robust against malicious content or ransomware. This means backups have to be "pulled" to a secure machine, or placed on WORM media.

I miss tapes. It would be nice if someone could come out with a consumer level tape drive, something like a 4mm form factor, with 2-5 terabytes (native), the ability to function as a WORM cartridge if formatted as such (like DLT), and a hardware read/write switch.

Optical would be nice, but 25-40GB BD-R media just doesn't cut it

However, next to tapes is a secure machine, drive trays, and HDDs. So, for a home user, the solution is another NAS that is locked down (behind a firewall, doesn't have contact to the Net, only is allowed to ssh to the primary NAS, etc.)

3: It needs to be robust against a site getting destroyed. Rotating a backup NAS or drives offsite fits this.

4: Having the ability to access the data anywhere is nice. A VM running LogMeIn or a VPN is good enough for this.

Re:a Synology NAS

[Antique Geekmeister]

> The discs are still good

Except when they are not, especially in a RAID enclosure where identical drives are suffering similar rates of use. Some of us encountered the "Deathstar" series of drives, the IBM Deskstar 75GXP.

Live disk arrays are also vulnerable to accidental "rm -rf /" errors. Off-line backup is critical to recovery from such accidents.

Re:a Synology NAS

[bad-badtz-maru]

You buy a new enclosure _if_ one is still available. It's not like you can just slap the drives into any chassis, even inside the same brand. It's definitely an issue worth mentioning, especially considering the OP's zeal, since it's easy to mistakenly overestimate the reliability of data on a NAS.

Re:a Synology NAS

[Dutch Gun]

Well, yes, there's some common sense that has to happen here. Naturally it has to be a compatible model (Synology has a chart). And how many times do we have to say it? "RAID is not a backup". It's for high availability and local redundancy, nothing more.

RAID is useful for when one of your drives inevitably craps out on you, and you can just swap it on the fly without any downtime. I actually have a Synology NAS as well, and I've replaced failing/questionable drives several times so far over the years. I just unplugged the old one and shoved in a new one, simple as that, all while the NAS was still running. About half a day later, the drive was synced up with the rest of the system. Almost zero down time after three years of continuous operation.

However, should the worst happen, my critical data is all backed up to an Amazon S3 account.

email

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the NSA may have it all anyway, but being under less corporate control is a nice feeling.

You can probably avoid NSA having the contents of your emails by using PGP to encrypt them (and being careful with your keys).

Many clients like Thunderbird offer plug-in or sometimes native PGP support for email, and there's an RFC for it and everything.

Re:email

[Anrego]

Only works if everyone else plays along. The problem with securing email has never been a lack of means but a lack of popularity.

Re:email

[vtcodger]

Many, many years ago my boss was in Washington DC doing some intensive marketing and I was in San Diego trying to keep his operation on track. Since the stuff he needed was proprietary, we tried encrypting our messages (on DARPANET as I recall) for a while. That lasted about three days. Technically, it worked fine. Pragmatically, it was a monumental PITA.

Re:email

[mlts]

The ironic thing is that encrypted messaging isn't hard. I always use a S/MIME certificate (even if I have to renew it myself), because my outgoing E-mail stands out because it is always signed, and if someone else has a S/MIME cert, email gets automatically encrypted between the two parties.

S/MIME isn't as secure as PGP because of the weakness with a CA, but it provides both data-in-flight protection as well as data-at-rest... "good enough" protection for a lot of tasks.

Of course, the problem is getting people to take the (relatively easy) steps to get a key, get the certificate, store the private key in a safe/secure place for a backup, add the key to their E-mail program and device, then turn it on.

The other problem is that people see the red ribbon in Outlook and then call the SOC that a user has infected them via Exchange, just because they think the ribbon is a warning, not a signature.

Changed my paradigm

[sdguero]

I no longer consider things like my name, address, social security number, ip address, bank acct number, etc to be "my data." The only things I still consider to be mine are my pictures, films, and music which I back to to external USB drives that I store in a fireproof safe. I leave the bulk of the security of my personal information up to my providers and try to use hard to crack passwords. If there is a leak (I'm sure there will be, if not already) and it affects my livelyhood, I will hold the company that compromised my data responsible. I don't believe that I have any assets that could be attacked that aren't covered by FDIC or identity theft protection, and none (other than title for my house/cars and my 401k/IRA) are worth more than what I can get back in small claims court, so I just don't worry about it.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[wyHunter]

Then you don't have any data at all.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[bwcbwc]

Just how do you plan to hold the companies responsible? It's almost 100% certain that the EULA waives your right to remedy in court in favor of binding arbitration. Even if you bring a lawyer to the arbitration hearing, the rules of discovery and other items are different.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking of a number, between one and one hundred. And you can't have it.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[reanjr]

Oh, a sensible security policy. Weird... don't see those very often. Most seem split into either the "internetz secure!?! IDK, LOL!" camp or the "my data must be secured from the NSA" camp.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

Odds are I'll have it after 50 or so guesses anyhow.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the NSA gives a shit about your data... Unless you are doing some really bad shit. Otherwise if they stumble across it they might laugh at your mirror selfies.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[phantomfive]

Like the NSA gives a shit about your data... Unless you are doing some really bad shit.

Or you're the girlfriend of an NSA employee. Or you're a senator who's been critical of the NSA policies.

Seriously, the NSA has shown that it's not trustworthy. We don't even need another whistleblower to show us that, it's out there in the open.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Slashdot. Your number is 42.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

I just make sure that I am constantly in the debt. It keeps my creditors motivated to keep my accounts in order.

If someone wants to steal my identity and pay off my bills, so be it.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost 100% certain that the EULA waives your right to remedy in court in favor of binding arbitration.

It depends on the state, some states do not allow you to sign away certain rights and those EULAs are typically void there.

Re:Changed my paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that SCOTUS has pretty much destroyed that 'some states' thing with rulings like this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/us/politics/supreme-court-upholds-arbitration-in-directtv-case.html?_r=0

Re:Changed my paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

Really sad attitude you have. You don't own your name, SSN, bank acct number. Humm the attitude of a slave. So your happy being a slave and not owning your own privacy. Here lies the real problem. One day you will regret your words.

Personally I would rather die standing free than to live on my knees as a slave.

Same setup for MacBook, except for online backups

[cerberusss]

I've moved from Python/C++ development on Linux to iOS development on a MacBook, but I've got the same setup as the Submitter.

However one thing I haven't found a replacement for, is online backup. I currently use BackBlaze, and it's soooooo damned stable, light-weight and easy to use... I wonder if there's self hosted alternative?

An open source self-hosted GitHub alternative

[ovidus naso]

Gogs a self-hosted GitHub alternative written in Go

no internet

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't ever do anything on the internet. Ever. Crazy bad people live there.

Not sure I understand the question...

[radish]

I can "maintain control of my own data" while still using external services. All my data sits locally, and is backed up to multiple locations, but I also put plenty of it out there in the world. But Flickr or Tumblr or Facebook or whatever could go away tomorrow without me losing anything material.

I'm not sure what the whole "corporate overlord" thing is all about...either use the services or don't. I don't see either as a significant victory for good or evil.

Re:Not sure I understand the question...

[Anonymous Coward]

OP installed linux on his computer and wants attention for what he sees as a courageous technical endeavor.

Good job, OP! Micro$oft loses another customer! Way to stick it to the man!

Re:Not sure I understand the question...

[bluefoxlucid]

People are paranoid that someone is watching their kitten pictures while rubbing their hands together and laughing evilly.

Re:Not sure I understand the question...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are simply uninformed. OP is worried about stuff like this:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiU_cWlg-TJAhUE1CYKHaSdA7oQFggsMAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmedia%2F2009%2Fjun%2F11%2Fsmith-family-photo-czech-advertisement&usg=AFQjCNFcrMhZOfCaDNR_BTLl1XbE-RXiFA

Is YOUR picture on a billboard on another continent? OP's is not, because he didn't trust a corporate overlord in the cloud not to give it to them.

Re:Not sure I understand the question...

[Anonymous Coward]

People are paranoid that someone is watching their kitten pictures while rubbing their hands together and laughing evilly.

But I AM watching their kitten pictures while rubbing my hands together and laughing evilly. So they aren't being paranoid.

My own VM

[Lorens]

I had my own server, now a VM. $45 bucks a year. Does everything I want, and if I'm not happy with the provider I move it.

I have done this....

[Brostenen]

Backing up my data on a USB harddrive.

Re:I have done this....

[Anonymous Coward]

USB external hard drives are unreliable, especially Seagate.

You, effectively, are un-backed up.

Re: I have done this....

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it is only powered on for backup of the computer were all data is stored and used on daily basis.

Re:I have done this....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a pile of dead USB hard drives showing that isn't a great idea.

A friend of mine still buys external USB hard drives (because they are cheap, and sometimes you might find a decent drive behind the USB interface, like a WD Red.) He then "shucks" two drives, jams the internal drives (they don't have to match, as Linux's LVM2 is pretty robust) into a cheap ARM based NAS like a Synology DS215J or a QNAP TS231. From there, the NAS goes a subnet and can be accessed via the protocol of choice. Since these are cheap NAS offerings, iSCSI is possible, but not that fast to be worth bothering with unless one buys a 10gigE model.

Caveat. Gigabit Ethernet is sluggish, so this is should be done for backups. As for offsite backups, a NAS can be replicated, shut down, then put offsite every so often. If the NAS's motherboard dies, the disks use Linux LVM2 and ext4, so it isn't too difficult to extract the data from that.

Of course, if someone is needing an external USB hard drive, not for -backups- but -additional storage-, don't use a hard drive. Buy a SSD. I use a USB 3.0 SSD on a constant basis (mainly because it is a great place to stash an iTunes library and virtual machine images that really don't need to be sitting on the internal drive.) The SSD will likely last longer than the hard disk to boot, just because of its resistance to shocks and movement, especially when used with a laptop. Another advantage of a SSD is that multiple programs can be using it without them all trying to fight for for control of the drive head.

Re:I have done this....

[Brostenen]

I allways use USB harddrives, and I never ever let them be powered on, when they are not in need. So I still have my old 3.5# 250gb PATA based drive in my closet. It is used for backing up edited/changed and new stuff, once every month. Yeah... Those new 2.5# laptop SATA based usb-powered drives are crap. The old WD drives that Ellements were based on, are great. Even my old 20mb drive in my Unisys 80286 computer is still working flawlesley (it's a MFM-drive). Not planning to back that up, and it shall run til it dies. And it should have, as it is from 1989.

What data?

[bobbied]

Seriously.. I don't put data on the web, in the cloud or anyplace I don't completely control and monitor unless it is absolutely necessary. IF it's necessary, it only goes encrypted. So here are my rules...

1. Don't put data on the net if you can help it. Avoid it at nearly costs.

2. When you *do* need/want to put data on the net, ENCRYPT it first, even if it's not sensitive.

3. NEVER put sensitive data on the net unless you have no other choices, then encrypted it using the best encryption possible.

4. REMOVE any and all data on the net you have no more need for right away.

Re:What data?

[Blaskowicz]

You have put data on the net in clear, I've found it and here is the proof :

Seriously.. I don't put data on the web, in the cloud or anyplace I don't completely control and monitor unless it is absolutely necessary. IF it's necessary, it only goes encrypted. So here are my rules...

1. Don't put data on the net if you can help it. Avoid it at nearly costs.

2. When you *do* need/want to put data on the net, ENCRYPT it first, even if it's not sensitive.

3. NEVER put sensitive data on the net unless you have no other choices, then encrypted it using the best encryption possible.

4. REMOVE any and all data on the net you have no more need for right away.

--
Don't be a pessimist. It wouldn't work anyway...
Reply to This

Update Software

[Luthair]

If you really want to keep your data yours, you better be on top of all software updates. i.e. ownCloud has had 24 CVEs this year alone.

Re:Update Software

[d33tah]

And add some HTTP authentication so that you won't even be able to contact owncloud without entering password.

Thank you

[Coren22]

Thank you for this post schklerg, I was looking at replacing my Synology NAS with something that can do more and your post gave me lots of information in that direction.

FYI, the reason I am replacing the Synology is that it doesn't have enough processor power to run Plex, and keeps crashing under load. It isn't a bad product, just not enough horsepower for my needs.

Re:Thank you

[Voyager529]

There are a few options for you in this respect:

1.) Run the Plex server on another machine, and use a drive mapping to give the Plex server access to your media library. This is what I do, but for other reasons.
2.) FreeNAS. Plex, OwnCloud, and CrashPlan are all two-click-install plug-ins. TT-RSS is fairly simple to install in a jail and there are a handful of cut-and-paste tutorials for doing so. A friend of mine who's Unix savvy has successfully gotten Piwigo to work in a FreeNAS jail (IMO better than Coppermine), though getting the complete stack to work in a FreeNAS is a bit limiting, but that obviously depends on what points on the list are truly necessary for your needs.
3.) Netgear's NAS units are surprisingly good. I got a 4-bay unit for a friend of mine for about $200 on Newegg. It supports a mix-and-match number of drives, has a mobile app, runs Plex, and its throughput numbers were solid. It may well be worth a look.

Re:Thank you

[SeaFox]

Have you looked into XPEnology?
It's basically Synology's software hacked to run on any PC hardware you want.
So you can keep your familiarity with the Synology interface and packages, and put them on a machine with horsepower you'll never see in Synology's product lineup.

VPN

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a VPN with high encryption always, if you don't want 'unauthorized' backups being done of your data by certain 3 letter agencies.

Re:VPN

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise they got 1) access to the Certificate chains, 2) access to powerful computers and makes your AES look like opening a peanut (even with huge 256 letter pwds generated on keepass, they can take shortcuts - they have some of the best mathmaticians in the world working there - they invented the algorithms or know them more than the creator), 3) they can pwn any telco/isp, 4) have backdoors in your firmware (always flash to an opensource, openwrt/dd-wrt or sommething else).

Or they can just use a $5 wrench to beat you into submission.

Fake data

[Anonymous Coward]

I just have a script that does a lot of meaningless searches on random words and visits random web sites. Good luck separating the real ones from the fake ones, bitches!

good practices

[Anonymous Coward]

Biggest thing is I don't use "the cloud" or social media web sites. Never have, never will. All of my data stays on my own computers, all of which run Linux. All of my data is backed up on USB hard drives (one of which is stored off-site at a highly secure location) and USB flash drives. I am the only one that has access to these hard drives, flash drives, and my computers. I have installed privacy badger, noscript, and an adblocker in my web browser. I do not have a tablet, and my phone is a "dumb" phone that only makes phone calls and does texts. I do not give my correct name (or any other info) to any web sites.

I have been doing things this way for many years (since the days of BBSs before the internet was available to most people). I have always been a very private person, and protect my privacy as much as I can.

All this can be solved with a file share

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply run ENCFS (Fuse4Win/Fuse/Dokan) and OneDrive.

Share all you want with encryption.

Get a NAS; run that (but keep it behind a VPN (dd-wrt) with L2TP or OpenVPN). (keep in mind IoT / NAS applicances can /and have been compromised when cloud facing (that is why you use a VPN!). Also use a Radius server (also hostable on a spare old router (or the NAS).

All these server things you list, are unnecessary , you already have most likely a spare router, use that for RADIUS, use DD-WRT for VPNing in. Use NAS (Synology or FreeNAS or something) NEVER cloud facing, (VPN in!). Never host anything with EXTERNAL access to the cloud (except your VPN tunnel).

Different applications

[Britz]

- Piwigo for photos, because Digikam supports direct uploads to Piwigo.

- Kolab for Email/Calendar/Contacts, because it support ActiveSync and thus iOS and Android support syncing out of the box. Also Kolab is pretty awsome.

- Seafile for cloud file syncing, because it is a lot faster than Owncloud

Please keep in mind that I recommend Owncloud as well, because it is a lot easier to install and maintain. You only need webspace. No one in their right mind should really be operating a personal email server in 2015. This is what Google Apps is for. If you earn minimum wage or above, anything you pay for Google Apps will be a lot less than the time you spent on maintaining an email server. I also use Keepass and sync the file.

- Firefox Sync is open source and uses client side encryption. So why bother with Shaarli? Maybe because Firefox only just now came back to the iOS platform? Note: Chrome/Chromium is nice, but not really for me. For several reasons. This is a thread about keeping your data to yourself, so Chrome goes out the window anyways. Then we have the repeating issue with the extensions

http://labs.detectify.com/post...

which applies to Chromium as well. And then there was the quality/packaging issue on Debian. Among other stuff. So why bother? I use Chromium frequently. Just not as my primary browser.

Re:Different applications

[bluefoxlucid]

I like Google Drive, but OwnCloud is nice. I set it up in Docker in like 30 minutes with postgresql, redis, php-fpm, and nginx, living happily with other services (nginx connects to php5-fpm via socket and listens on a unix socket on another volume; the nginx unix socket volume is shared between all nginx containers, and the final container listens on HTTPS for a virtual host and just proxies back to the unix socket).

I've thought about hooking up OwnCloud to Google Drive (it does that) so I can use OwnCloud features without breaking up my storage. I wish there was something like the old EyeOS that got taken away from open source and left with a big "OPEN SOURCE" sign branded on it while they walled off all downloads and prevented anyone from using it unless they called for a sales person, negotiated a contract, and paid money. Not even a paypal link to buy and download; you had to contact for an Enterprise purchase. It was promising as hell.

Re:Different applications

[Britz]

I also set up DokuWiki myself recently. My webhoster Netcup is offering to update this application for their customers when they install it through their interface. In any subdirectory of my choice.

Re:Different applications

[Nkwe]

No one in their right mind should really be operating a personal email server in 2015. This is what Google Apps is for. If you earn minimum wage or above, anything you pay for Google Apps will be a lot less than the time you spent on maintaining an email server.

I disagree. True, it does cost you some time and you need certain skill sets to do it properly. You are purchasing benefits with that cost however, namely the comfort that no third party is accessing your already received and historically sent (archived) mail. In a legal discovery situation, you would know that there is legal action pending as you would have to be notified of a request to turn over old email; if your email is on someone else's server, you might never know. It may be true that for most people the cost benefit mix for running your own email server doesn't pay off, but it is not true for all people or "no one" as you say.

Re:Different applications

[Anonymous Coward]

> Firefox Sync is open source and uses client side encryption.

Yes and no. When you create the sync account with mozilla your password flows through Mozilla's systems. They promise that they won't keep a copy of it, but even if you trust them, that doesn't mean someone else hasn't MITM the process and siphoned off a copy.

I've been waiting for someone to take the firefox sync code and make it easy to rehost on your servers. Maybe someone has, I haven't checked for about a year. Previously mozilla was not doing anything to make it easy.

Re:Different applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on Earth would you recommend gapps in a thread about keeping data to yourself?

Re:Different applications

[Anonymous Coward]

No one in their right mind should really be operating a personal email server in 2015

Hand in your geek pass immediately!

I love my personal email server. And Life with Qmail is a right of passage.
I have seen grown men brought to tears, dragged through the darkest depths of hell to appear on the otherside reborn with a working qmail server.
Damn if I will shutdown my "always" delivers email effigy just because it is not "2015" hip.

Just because you have not reached the email transcendental realm does not mean I should leave it or encourage others not to attempt the true journey to enlightenment.

I bet you don't even run a gopher server.
Now get off my lawn!

Re:Different applications

[schklerg]

I'd forgotten about Kolab, I may go that way instead. I appreciate the answers!

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[dotancohen]

I currently use BackBlaze, and it's soooooo damned stable, light-weight and easy to use... I wonder if there's self hosted alternative?

BackBlaze stores your private key on their servers:
https://www.backblaze.com/back...

That doesn't seem very private to me. In fact, when you want to restore your data, the data is decrypted on the BackBlaze server, then zipped and the zip file is sent with the unencrypted files. You can add a passphrase to the private key, but again this passphrase needs to be entered into the BackBlaze website so that the files can be decrypted on the server. They promise not to store the passphrase. I love promises.

Schizophrenic Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Next up is moving from gmail with iRedMail. Yes, the NSA may have it all anyway, but being under less corporate control is a nice feeling.

So here's free advertisement for a questionable software package that may in fact compromise your system upon installation (nobody knows and nobody's telling, as usual, until it's too late). You're still just as vulnerable to the government but you can be a hippie too and alienate yourself from most of the world's economy! Do it because it feels good!

IRedmail

[Anonymous Coward]

Was stupid easy to setup on a Ubuntu VM. Only problem encountered was in the free GUI version there is no way through the GUI to set a domain wide catchall email address. I was able to do that with a SQL command after searching for it though.. Sorry I don't have the link handy.

SeaFile, OpenVPN, etc

[Anonymous Coward]

All my data is stored on a RAID10 (primary) and RAID1 (secondary) server using SeaFile (open source, seafile.com). I run my own web (https) and email (TLS) servers and firewalls, and if I'm not on the local network I work via a VPN back to the home site (TunnelBlick is my client of choice), including rules on Little Snitch that prevent any network traffic whatsoever until the VPN is established. Local machines use encrypted filesystems. For discreet browsing I run a private obfuscated TOR bridge. I digitally sign all of my email with PGP but sadly most of my contacts do not encrypt. For passwords it's 1Password with very long random phrases (not strings) for each site.

All of my hardware is hand-built from parts and runs up-to-date versions of Linux. I keep a TAILS USB stick in my bag in case there’s an issue connecting to my VPN or some other reason I can’t be sure of my status.

I feel like I could still do more, especially with op-sec, but I have some comfort that none of my files are on anything but servers that I have complete control over.

With all of that I still assume that most of what I do online is still susceptible to surveillance.

CIFS and lots of redundancy

[duke_cheetah2003]

4 hard drives. Two operating in RAID1 in a Linux file server (CIFS.) 1 external hard drive which weekly automated backups are sent to. 1 external hard drive which is manually mirrored from the other external once every few months and stored in a safe place.

RAID1 lost a drive a couple months ago, no biggy, just replaced it, didn't lose a thing. The super sensitive irreplaceables (my source code primarily) are kept in a TrueCrypt volume on my AWS server. Just extra insurance against house burning to the ground or something.

I don't really care for all the fancy junk. I just use CIFS behind firewalls/over VPN's to shuffle files around as needed. Keep it simple, stupid!

Easier solution.

[fahrbot-bot]

Just wait for the NSA to stand up their own Cloud services (probably in their Utah data center) and let them host/store everything for you. Then you can kick back and stop worrying if they've got copies of all your data. As a bonus they handle all your backup needs too.

(I mean, if you've got nothing to hide ... and all that.)

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[Paco103]

Crashplan allows you to host on your own environments, or peer with a friend and exchange diskspace for encrypted backups. You can even seed backups via removable disks to get a large backup hosted quickly.

Sandstorm

[paulproteus]

I run an instance of Sandstorm, which is software you can install on a Linux server that lets you run other apps. Some features:

* One-click installs of any of 47 apps, like WeKan (similar to Trello) and Davros (similar to Dropbox) and Etherpad (which you probably already know about) and Piwik (similar to Google Analytics).

* Total self-hostability, with auto-configured free HTTPS certificates and dynamic DNS if you want.

* Security sandboxing of the apps against each other and away from the Internet, so malicious apps can't leak your data back to the app's author.

* A way to "share" an instance of any app, like on Google Docs.

* Total open source-ness.

Admittedly, I'm one of its authors too. So feel free to take this with a grain of salt. But I do use it every single day.

Also if your friends don't want to self-host, but want to use the same apps as you, the Sandstorm.io company runs a hosting service.

Re:Sandstorm

[schklerg]

Sandstorm looks nice. I'm going to test to see if it's worth it to migrate. I was really hoping to get more of this type of responses to the thread - ones which expose others to alternatives. Thanks.

In Other Words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this question basically just "What software (as opposed to services) do you use?" Seriously, it generalizes that far up.

Bit by Bit, and Designing My Own

[Foresto]

I self-host and encrypt where possible. For other things, I use providers as trustworthy as I can find.

Email privacy is a tough problem, but a solvable one. I'm working on a project that will give me gmail-like convenience without entrusting my data to Google, and might eventually grow automated/transparent encryption capabilities. It's going to be a while before it's usable, though; nobody is paying me to work on it, so it doesn't get enough of my time. (The mailpile project overlaps some of my goals in this area, and might be worth a look to anyone interested in the topic.)

A Facebook replacement is another tough one, perhaps even tougher than email, but I believe it's also solvable.

Please keep asking questions like this, and sharing what you discover. The more of us we have thinking about these problems, the more likely we are to work out their solutions.

Re:Bit by Bit, and Designing My Own

[tomxor]

A Facebook replacement is another tough one, perhaps even tougher than email, but I believe it's also solvable.

Although i'm a little biased on this subject, i can't help but think that in 10 years time people will be scratching their heads trying to understand why facebook was so important to everyone - it feels like something that should be grown out of... i know people like to connect, but there has to be better ways (different ways) than facebook that have yet to be realised, and there is no reason why all your data and activity has to be mined by a single large corporation in the process.

I think emails is more useful, it might seem old but conceptually it will never dies because it's so simple and obvious - facebook isn't.

Re:Bit by Bit, and Designing My Own

[mlts]

A FB replacement wouldn't be too hard to do. In fact, we already had something that did everything FB did back in the 1980s and early 1990s... we had multiples... called AOL, CIS, Prodigy, and The Source.

If coding, it might be wise to code around having small social networks which are interconnected. Want to message someone on another network, or have a wall with content from a number of other providers? We have the Internet protocols for all of that, such as NNTP for store-and-forward bulk stuff (with an access layer thrown on top), and for faster messaging, we have plenty of protocols for that. There are many ways to throw data around to minimize bandwidth used, especially with the extensive CDN/edge data center network in place by Akamai and other providers.

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[sparky81]

I think that was his point - that he hadn't found an easy self-hosted alternative. Do you have one?

I don't have a Data Mine.

[Bing Tsher E]

I don't have a Data Mine to keep.

Isn't this more of an issue for entities like Google? They're the ones whose Data Mine is jeopardized by the kinds of rules adopted in the EU.

Only big companies and organizations have Data Mines.

If you assume that NSA will get it anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

.. than there is a convenient solution:
http://www.nsa-cloud.com/

What have I done?

[ttucker]

Running all of that stuff is fun when you have the time, but frankly is a huge pain in the ass in the long run. Eventually you will shave that neckbeard right off and start using Gmail again, probably without any Slashdot article...

Re:What have I done?

[cerberusss]

Running all of that stuff is fun when you have the time, but frankly is a huge pain in the ass in the long run

Well, it depends a bit on what your needs are. I too have a family and not a lot of spare time. For email, I use Google Apps. It's not worth it to me to spend the time on configuring spam protection on the level of Google. But file syncing is very, very easy. I got an ownCloud instance running in 30 minutes or so, plus another 30 minutes getting it to run over HTTPS. That's more than a year ago; haven't touched it since then, except for the occasional update.

A Suggestion?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

They have these things called "Hard Drives" and they can "Store Data" and even made into a "Raid" that can help "Preserve Data".

I have to go look up how much I owe Dr. Evil for the use of the quotes but expecting the online storage to be private is like wishing that an ice cube will protect you from a nuke.

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[Anonymous Coward]

Since my desktop destroyed itself, my MacBook (well, a MBP... but who really cares) is doing desktop duty, and I'm also doing some OS X and iOS stuff until my next job starts.

Here is what I do for backups:

1: I have a Time Capsule that uses an encrypted sparse bundle disk image for stashing the Mac's goodies. I wish Apple would use two 2.5" drives in a RAID 1 config, but it just has a single enterprise-grade 3.5" drive. Great for "oh shit" bare metal backups.

2: Public stuff goes to GitHub, such as some OS X specific applications.

3: For files and archives, I have a NAS (Synology or QNAP...) which serves are a file share, as well as a spot for zbackup repos. You can use obnam, ZPAQ, attic, bup, or borgbackup, but zbackup is simple, as it is used as part of a pipe, so I can use the operating system's tar command, pipe it to zbackup, and zbackup handles the deduplication (byte level with a rolling hash), as well as compression (lzma, same as xz.) It also has AES-128 encryption as well.

I have a cronjob which tars up my entire home directory and jams it into zbackup and onto the dual-drive, RAID-1 NAS. Since only deltas are saved, I can stuff 100 gigs into it, and have the repository grow by only a few megs.

4: For documents, I use Mozy with a keyfile.

5: The NAS dumps its contents nightly to an external drive, so if the NAS dies, I can mount the external drive on any Linux box as an ext4 filesystem, NFS share the repo, and be able to restore.

This provides me three levels of protection:

1: Complete, "oh shit" bare metal restore ability.
2: Long term storage of documents.
3: Ability to retrieve the documents from remote, with an encryption layer.

Of course, this system isn't perfect:

1: Malware doing a rm against everything will destroy everything but the data stuffed into GitHub and Mozy.

2: This system is not designed with LEOs as a factor. I use encryption, but that is to deter the skiddie who breaks into a cloud server, grabs a bunch of directories, tars them up, and stuffs them onto BitTorrent as an act of vandalism or extortion. Similar with local encryption. Where I live, meth is a big problem, so the encryption is good enough to keep the tweakers out of the data, limiting the damage to "just" a hardware theft.

I will be addressing weakness #1 via a "pull" backup mechanism with a higher end NAS (likely a Synology DS716+), installing zbackup directly on the NAS itself, and having it SSH into my machines, tar off data, and jam it into the repository. Since the keyfile would be inside an eCryptFS directory, if the NAS got stolen, all data on there would still be inaccessible.

One side note: Since I was forced to move to a Mac, backups have become a -lot- easier. Windows doesn't play well when saving off open files.

Private Business Card Scanner

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not really keen on sharing my entire contacts list with the Chinese. Anybody have a suggestion for a business card scanner that doesn't call home with your contacts list?

Maybe...

[nnull]

Stop using cloud services?

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[dotancohen]

Sure, but it's a bit more involved to use:
https://aws.amazon.com/glacier...

Let me quote something from that page:

$0.007 per GB

And of course I encrypt the files locally before uploading them. My private key remains private, and I have it backed up as well on physical media in disparate locations, not online.

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[ls671]

rsync over ssh. The backup server initiate the connection. Use the backup dir option in rsync for incremental backups and a script to gzip the incremental backups.

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[cerberusss]

I don't really like Crashplan. It's this humongous Java app which sucks CPU. But I agree it's probably the only practical and easy way to go about it.

Re:2015 is for Cows

[behrooz0az]

So, when are you from? 1346?

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[Thumper_SVX]

This. I do this too using S3CMD. You can upload to S3 more easily than Glacier... so far a command-line based Glacier client is sorely lacking. Still, I upload to S3 and then have my S3 data set to archive to Glacier after 24 hours which it does automatically. That means the only files that are in S3 are the most recently changed or new.

Like you I have a script that locally encrypts with my own private key before upload. That private key I keep in my Owncloud.

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[Anonymous Coward]

While not a self-hosted alternative, tarsnap might be a better online solution:

http://www.tarsnap.com/

Re:2015 is for Cows

[Anonymous Coward]

Jumping into the newest fad in data storage doesn't have much to do with the inquisition. I like the Japanese take on technology - approach it cautiously. In spite of the fact that they're the country with animated robots at hotel check-in desks, they don't use streaming video there at all! Blockbuster (e.g. Japan version) - is where they get ALL their movies. Why? Their cautiousness might carry with it the idea that what they watch is their business. I think they'd laugh at the Amercian jump-before-looking approach to the latest technology. They take their privacy seriously, even though they have the best internet bandwidth on the planet.

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[dotancohen]

Like you I have a script that locally encrypts with my own private key before upload. That private key I keep in my Owncloud.

I would love to see your script, if you don't mind sharing. Mine is "in development" i.e. I still prefer to do it all manually which means that backups do not happen as often as they should.

Re:Same setup for MacBook, except for online backu

[Thumper_SVX]

Drop me an email. This user name at nodecaf dot net. I'll be more than happy to share the script with you :)