Shop OBEX P1 Docs P2 Docs Learn Events
Free 50G online Storage — Parallax Forums

Free 50G online Storage

pacmanpacman Posts: 327
edited 2013-02-21 11:21 in General Discussion
Came across this today.

https://www.box.com/signup/o/dell_50gb_give_get

Looks like its 50G for life for free.

Whilst there are other solutions out there - i thought I should share.

Hope it is of some use to someone...

Comments

  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-02-10 06:50
    Free? For Life? From Dell? Aren't they about to go private? That might be a very short life.

    Kim Dotcom opened another Mega site regardless of the courts, the US government and the FBI trying to shut him down. But I doubt you can get free storage from him.

    It certainly takes all kinds to make a World Wide Web.


    http://kim.com/
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2013-02-10 08:23
    Well, it's from Box, not Dell.. they [Box] run those campaigns now and then. I have 50GB ("for life") simply because I connected with an Android device at the right time. I had no idea until a pop-up told me I now had 50GB. This was from my already-existing, until-then used-from-desktop account.

    It's not as useful as one would think, as there's no filesystem integration.. Wuala has that, and client-side encryption. Dropbox doesn't have client-side encryption, but they have filesystem integration and then it's easy to slap a local encrypted filesystem on top. So until box gets at least that I'm not using those 50 gigs for much. Well, even filesystem integration without encryption would be more useful.

    -Tor
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-10 08:32
    In the old days companies had to invade your privicy by tracking and spying on you by devious means.
    Now they just ask.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,261
    edited 2013-02-10 12:08
    Dell going private is probably a good thing. As a public company, they are seriously constrained to maximize quarterly revenue which gets in the way of longer term changes and investments that Dell very likely needs to continue.

    As for the private data, just give 'em garbage.
  • softconsoftcon Posts: 217
    edited 2013-02-10 17:32
    Yah, it wouldn't let me go past the signup screen until I gave a phone number. So, I filled in all zeros. Problem solved. :)
    Using it to bakup all my electronic books. Got several gigs of those, so having an offsite place to put them is very useful.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2013-02-10 17:41
    I'll bite the bullet and offer to store 50 of your VISA and PIN codes in my secure site. Just hit reply, post all your info in this thread and you're good to go.
  • NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
    edited 2013-02-10 17:51
    In this day and age enough people have my info. I don't want them having my data too!!!! Hard drives, both internal and external are relatively inexpensive these days. I have backups of my backups backup!!! I can access my systems from anywhere in the world so I do not need other companes doing this and risking my data falling in to the wrong hands.

    I host Offsite backups for some of my clients. I use software that heavily encrypts the data and even though the Server is in my office, I can not access the data. Very well thought out software.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,261
    edited 2013-02-10 18:03
    Actually the phone number is making a lot of sense these days. A quick text is often used to recover / authenticate account changes. I typically don't give them garbage these days. Anything I really don't want getting out there simply can't be on the net.

    Data that's personal to me stays off line. The most common use for services like this is quick and easy file exchange / collaboration. It is getting really hard to transfer data within both big companies and supply chains. Most common things are fire walled away, though I do think it's pretty funny an executable or Zip archive gets through more often than not when renamed ".safe" Most times I'll just do it like this, "something.exe.safe" and right through it goes! Some of them are wising up now as it's starting to fail more and more. A few years and that won't work.

    I use services like this constantly for that reason. Never keep anything I really value in them, but I do move lots of stuff through the services because it's easier that way.

    Larger corporations are getting nuts about security. Many asking for birth certs, photo ID and god knows what else just to have a conference. Much easier to stay out of the building and do it all that way. Not sure whether or not that is their intent, but it is the increasingly common result. IT just locks most things down due to onerous requirements and or large user populations and small staffing. I find myself carrying more documentation than I would when dealing with Uncle Sam!

    Worse, IT consultant firms are increasingly used instead of in-house staff. They do the same thing due to large numbers of accounts and users and small staff. Getting ugly out there.

    And if you need to install something? LOL Act of God required. I signed up for this one as it's another nice big storage option that I'll use instead of mailing disks or fighting with IT policy. Interestingly, they don't appear to be targeting things like this yet. I'm sure they will, but right now it's the way to go if there is data to be exchanged. Where they are targeting these services, I find the other party will just do what they need to. I can drop it, share the location and it's up to them to work through whatever mess they've got to work with. Their problem doesn't need to be mine.

    Such is life in my niche right now. (Aero, Auto, various supply chain / integrated manufacturers)
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-02-10 22:04
    potatohead,
    Most times I'll just do it like this, "something.exe.safe" and right through it goes! Some of them are wising up now as it's starting to fail more and more. A few years and that won't work.
    I believe there will always be a way through.

    Unless they totally block the inside of their networks from the internet or seriously restrict to a few trusted sites they need to do business with.

    One can always wrap ones data up as an image file format or audio, or encode it as HTML. At that point they would have to inspect the internals of everything that passes through and actually working out the difference between allowed and disallowed data is a hard problem.

    This would be intolerable for most businesses that need access to the wide internet to function.

    Of course there are places that woud go to extremes. I once worked for a team hosed in an office that:
    1) Required 3 different security passes/keys to physically get into the office.
    2) Had no windows.
    3) Had no phone or network cables entering the office.
    4) Required all hard drives to be removed from their machines and locked in a safe at night.
    5) The office itself was required to be positioned some meters, I forget how many, from the outside boundry of the site.
    6) No cameras etc allowed inside.

    That kind of regime might make you secure but form most it also makes business impossible.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,261
    edited 2013-02-10 22:13
    They actually do inspect the internals on the better incoming mail firewalls. They can find an exe inside of a zip sent as text! As for the problem, that's pushed onto the people who want to exchange data. Simple e-mail text will get through. If other things don't? IT doesn't care, your problem, next. Those mail-firewalls are SLOW. Takes a while for mail to move because it's all profiled then examined based on the data profile, not extensions or anything simple like that. Hate 'em.

    I use these services regularly because of that. FTP, etc... often not allowed at all. Some companies won't even take an e-mail unless one of their people has sent to you first.

    These two things are selling points that larger corporations find very attractive depending on their business.

    "Intolerable" is clearly a relative term. For the higher security places I mentioned, again they don't care. Yes, they need the net, but they want problems less and security more. I've often found it quicker to mail the data. No joke. Or, like I edited my post above, I'll drop it onto a service, share the location and it's their problem from there. Or they wait for mail service.

    For many government / military contract jobs, they can and do electrically isolate the team. Data moves via physical media, or severely restricted network. PITA. I deal with this garbage all the time.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-02-11 00:56
    These days the big show on TV is Auction Hunters that go from abandoned storage unit to abandoned storage unit to find all sorts of odd goodies.

    I wonder if abandoned on-line data storage will ever be auctioned off to a data miner? Keep your hoard at home.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,261
    edited 2013-02-11 08:37
    I think this really depends on how much of a target any one person is. Security isn't an absolute thing. Really, there are just levels of difficulty and risk / reward factors. And one could simplify that all down to just risk / reward the risk being time and materials investment and the reward being whatever one gets for circumventing security measures.

    What that means is the biggest way to improve your security is to simply not be a desirable target.

    I've boiled all that down to keeping those things I want private off the net. Everything else really doesn't matter much as any one of us is just signal in the noise. If they can make a coupla bucks with a targeted AD, fine by me. The alternative is micro-payments and trust me, that one won't be pretty and it will never die either. Everybody wants that because it's hard revenue instead of the mess that is advertizing. Over time, we've seen the net work best on an all you can eat type of model, not a pay as you go model. That may change, but for now the info they want for advertizing really isn't a big deal.

    Besides, it's always fun to raise the noise floor a little. Share a computer with a few kids? Good luck on that data mining exercise. I did this and they still are very confused as to who is behind the keyboard. Perfect!

    As for that hoard, yeah. Depending on what a person has done, it might be wise to keep it off line, but really this was the right thing to do the whole time!

    Then there is personal / professional. On a personal note, I manage these things to a much higher degree than I do professionally. When it comes to actual work, I'm more interested in getting said work done quickly and correctly than I am about the meta-data associated with me and that work. The one golden rule appears to be don't mix professional and personal behavior too much. Politics, hobbies and such can create undesirable scenarios. Avoid that, and the rest isn't a big deal, IMHO.

    Just gave this service a dry run. I will move data in the GB range regularly. 50GB is a great storage size. Transfer rates can be managed easy enough, though at the GB size I typically want to just get it done fast and deal until it is. For the case of "back my stuff up", a trickle type rate is preferable. That won't be my use case though.

    Dropped the data on there and provided the info to the other party. If it works well and I don't see trouble, I'll just add this one to the few others I've got on tap and thanks Dell! If they can profit from that use case, I'm pleased to let them because it's a nice time saver. If not, then this will probably go away at some point, which is why I keep a few at any one time.

    There is always the Post. Never underestimate the throughput of the Postal Service. Latency is a little high, but transfer rates are insane fast! Basically, the Postal Service has as much throughput as you need.
  • leyonchungleyonchung Posts: 1
    edited 2013-02-21 07:38
    It is everywhere! Signed up with 2 accounts and now enjoying it ;) Apart from this free round up i use Dropbox (Paid) and JusrtCloud which is economical though.
  • Peter KG6LSEPeter KG6LSE Posts: 1,383
    edited 2013-02-21 10:58
    potatohead wrote: »
    There is always the Post. Never underestimate the throughput of the Postal Service. Latency is a little high, but transfer rates are insane fast! Basically, the Postal Service has as much throughput as you need.


    Never under estimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of 1 TB HDDs ...... ( Drools)

    http://www.dansdata.com/gz105.htm a must Read !!.. Very funny .\
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2013-02-21 11:21
    Never under estimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of 1 TB HDDs ...... ( Drools)
    \

    Please, the original quote goes something like this:
    Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

    I remember this quote back to the early '80s when the tapes were 9-track reels and network bandwidths were much less than today. Storage densities have increased, network bandwidths have increased and station wagons are a thing of the past.
Sign In or Register to comment.