Google Drive could soon start locking your files

[KVG198X]

Having worked on a mod project before, I've always found Dropbox to be pretty reliable. Although recently, I've been using Mega for uploads.

 

[ArtisDead]

Mega has always been reliable for me. I've had an account there for many years.

 

[LastSurvivor]

Mega has always been reliable for me. I've had an account there for many years.

Same here. Been using Mega ever since Rapidshare went down - and yes, that seems like another age completely!

 

[lantern51]

Icedrive looks like a good reliable alternative too

 

[zrfarnsworth]

Thanks for the heads up. Looks like I'll be looking into Mega as an alternative.

 

[CAL0901]

Thanks for the heads up. Looks like I'll be looking into Mega as an alternative.

My pleasure. Mega has worked for me for a few years. I pay 4.99 euros for 400gb storage, 1TB traffic per month. There are a few other good suggestions in this thread.

 

[lantern51]

I have been having fantastic results using MediaFire! Fast download, no limits on file sizes (paid version) and links auto generate as soon as the file is loaded without expiring unless you set up a temp link.

 

[nightauthor]

I'm curious why torrents seem to be so underutilized, or even usenet.

 

[That One Guy]

Bumping this because this article reminded me of the conversation.
Basically Microsoft's online storage now scans files for malware, including inside password-protected zip files. This is nominally good in terms of malware - but as the article points out it makes it difficult for malware analysts working in infosec to share samples of malware.

It's not difficult to see the same underpinning technology being turned towards media, and since it's impossible to easily distinguish regular copyright infringement from a fanedit being shared, it's likely to cause headaches.

I will continue to advocate for sharing fanedits as spanned 7z files created with AES256 encryption. This latest development suggests that edit-specific passwords would be a good idea...

 

[The Scribbling Man]

I will continue to advocate for sharing fanedits as spanned 7z files created with AES256 encryption. This latest development suggests that edit-specific passwords would be a good idea...

Could you expand on this? At first it sounded like you were saying that it won't make a difference if it's password-protected or not.

 

[That One Guy]

Could you expand on this? At first it sounded like you were saying that it won't make a difference if it's password-protected or not.

Sure

The default method of password protection used in Windows uses a system called ZipCrypto. This method will stop you from extracting the contents of a zip file unless you have a password, but you can still inspect details of the contents including the file names.
So if you have e.g. a Pirates of the Caribbean edit called "Pirates Of The Caribbean - More Booty Edition.mkv" in a zip file protected with ZipCrypto password protection, anyone who downloads the file knows what the filename is - whether or not they have the password.

If you use the .7z format instead of .zip format in software like 7-zip, you can use AES256 encryption as part of password protecting the file - this is a much more robust form of encryption and does not disclose any details of the file contents until the correct decryption password is entered.

Spanned files are just my preference in terms of it being easier to resume upload/download of a file split into 250MB or 500MB chunks than it is an entire file in one go.

Edit: Another thing I forgot to mention is re: password reuse. The article I linked casually mentions that the new scanning system Microsoft has deployed will scan messages with zip attachments for possible passwords to use, and if those do not work it will fall back to using a list of known passwords. This means that having/using a default password as has historically been the case would make it easier for the password protection to be rendered ineffective, since once the password gets on the list all future edits would likely be checked with it.

 

[The Scribbling Man]

^^ thanks. That's helpful. I already use 7zip. I've never used passwords for my edits though and I've never had any trouble. I like to keep things accessible, but I'll give this further consideration. Presumably though, if you included a readme with the password for users, that would make the password protection redundant? I expect that, for it to provide an extra layer of protection, one would need to only give out the password via PM when providing the link?

 

[That One Guy]

I suspect a readme file would be likely to be identified as a source for possible passwords, but I could be wrong.

Having said that, simple obfuscation like sharing a base64 encoded version of the password would likely be enough in terms of evading automatic scanning.