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@SeveM wrote:
The data loss at Mycloud has been going on for over a year, but no media has reported on it during this time. Now it’s in the media and that’s why there’s a big outcry. The fact seems to be that no improvements to the system have been achieved in a year. That’s a bit surprising. 🤷‍♂️

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If data loss with myCloud were very common, there would be a lot going on here in the community. I have set up myCloud for almost 20 users and they haven’t had a single data loss so far.

The question arises, what kind of files were those?

We very much regret the error. But before any misunderstandings arise:

The incident happened in 2018 and was a one-time problem. Every possible measure has been taken to ensure that something like this cannot happen again.

We have personally informed every single affected user over the last few months. So if you haven’t heard from us, you haven’t been affected.

I can only apologize to the affected users and ask for their trust in the future.

Guido

So a cloud operator wouldn’t definitely get rid of my photos that easily.

Since I never use cloud storage as originals, but only as additional copies of local backup libraries (keyword: fire backup), he would have simply had them “shoved back in” again the next day at the latest as part of the automated local backup cycle…

Unlike Google Drive, it often happens with myCloud that old photos are re-uploaded. However, I would not suspect regular data loss in the cloud, but rather just undetected errors in the myCloud synchronization program.

Now you have not only messed up the cloud for enterprise customers but also for private customers. Well done! 😊

It really amazes me that you can actually manage something like this… You haven’t even come close to doing your homework. Trust? Unfortunately, that is now completely gone… The competition now not only has cheaper alternatives, but also more technically sophisticated, reliable ones and even with customer service. And that actually applies to all services that Swisscom offers.

Quote from a major Swiss tabloid:

3. The customers’ files are stored unencrypted on MyCloud and, according to the Tamedia newspapers, can be freely viewed by service employees. Is that correct?

With international competitors like Dropbox, all data is encrypted and only visible to the customer. At Swisscom, the transmission of data to MyCloud is encrypted, but the data storage is not, write the Tamedia newspapers.

Huber contradicts: “The data cannot be viewed ‘freely’ by anyone other than the user themselves, but is stored in pieces in packages.” Only when accessed by the user would the parts be put together by the software and delivered to the user.

Such quibbles don’t exactly inspire confidence. It would be informative to know how big the hurdles to access actually are for employees or what type of employee has this permission, under what conditions this is exercised and how compliance with the rules is ensured. Without clear assurances in this regard, especially in small Switzerland, it should not simply be assumed that with 20,000 Swisscom employees, not one of my acquaintances or neighbors could use the software mentioned in the quote. Then it’s much better to use Google or OneDrive, at least the (un)probability ratio is better there! :")

Actually only one thing has happened at the moment:

One or two TA journalists picked up on an age-old topic or took it up again in the beginning of the sour pickle era and have now simply put it in the spotlight in the media.

Everything else is just old coffee:

Because quite a long time ago, people were joking here in the forum about “Grandma’s fetal grave” and in discussions it was often recommended to use myCloud at most as a way to display the family photos on grandma’s Swisscom TV Anschluss. (without, of course, wanting to devalue all the deserving grandmas on a human or intellectual level)

It has long been clear to all the more committed members of this forum that there has always been a huge gap between the promises of marketing and the technical realities of the product.

At times there were also suggestions to simply cancel this unpromising me-too project initiative for a consumer cloud completely and to better invest the investment funds in the core tasks of an ISP, namely in the best possible network access.

So if this media story has any positive effect on Swisscom at all, it might be that it can shorten the duration of the misallocation of investment funds.

First of all, I would recommend dropping the entire files part and reducing the topic to photos and their display within the framework of Swisscom TV and possibly other clients such as mobiles and tablets (and possibly a browser display).

If that’s no longer worth it, I would also delete photo storage at the end.

Swisscom customers won’t be missing anything really important when they complete myCloud, because there are already more than enough of both file clouds and photo clouds of better quality internationally and a cloud with an internet connection can generally be advertised as secure, just because the physical one Storage in Switzerland is simply ridiculous given the global networking of today’s Internet…

Since Swisscom marketing itself can’t be that stupid, internal marketing people probably believe that the majority of customers are that stupid - and in my personal experience, this line of thinking always pays off in the long term.

@HeMan No employee has the opportunity to compile and view the data. This requires a variety of information and requires a huge amount of effort that would be noticeable.

myCloud has developed massively since the problem, because we are constantly working on it. The team is highly motivated and has learned from the mistake. We still have a lot to do with myCloud.

@Anonymous

Of course, everyone believes in a strategy they have already chosen for as long as possible - until they give it up or have to give it up.

Completely independent of the current hype in the media, in my opinion Swisscom’s chances of ever making any real money on this issue are somewhere between very bad and miserable.

Of course, you can continue to cross-subsidize the issue through subscriptions for a longer period of time, but that only makes the amount of damage in the end even greater.

Werner

Someone from the online news portal Watson is apparently a community member here.

I was a little surprised when I found one of my old posts on the subject of myCloud as part of an article, but at least I was correctly cited as the source and I was kindly even referred to as an expert in the accompanying text:

So if I had known back in May that I would be quoted verbatim with my recommendations in a news portal in July, I would have put a little more effort into writing this post…

And to prevent possible false conclusions:

- No, I don’t write articles for Watson myself

- I have not yet received a request as to where you can send the royalties

- Of course, Swisscom marketing employees also (don’t) always babble

Swisscom made mistakes while working on memory optimization. Files from MyCloud accounts were accidentally moved to the storage system area for permanent deletion. Data that a user has deleted from their personal trash can is usually transferred to this area. This is certainly very annoying for My Cloud users - but I hope that every user does not save their data in the cloud, but on an external hard drive. I can give you this advice. The cloud is more suitable for partial storage that you want to have access to while on the go. The new incident 14 days ago with the deletion of user files is very negative, especially for Swisscom. What strikes me here is that Swisscom did not make this public - but is now in the crossfire through the media. This causes even more damage than if you went on the offensive yourself. Swisscom is probably taking over something in the new greed for user data - in this sense the saying fits: “Schuster stick to your soles.”

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@Werner wrote:

@Anonymous

Of course, everyone believes in a strategy they have already chosen for as long as possible - until they give it up or have to give it up.

Completely independent of the current hype in the media, in my opinion Swisscom’s chances of ever making real money on this issue are somewhere between very bad and miserable.

Of course, you can continue to cross-subsidize the issue through subscriptions for a longer period of time, but that only makes the amount of damage in the end even greater.

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Allergic to myCloud? Then just don’t use them.

MyCloud is not as bad as you make it out to be. I see this more as a value-added product because you want to offer customers something extra for the expensive Swisscom subscriptions. The costs for the manpower that goes into it would be incurred either way. That’s how I see it anyway.

Swisscom will (probably/hopefully/certainly/possibly unfortunately for you?) learn from this mistake. And so do those who suffered harm. The damage to the image that can be traced back to this incident will be very small. In six months no one will be talking about it anymore; a) because the majority simply don’t care and they didn’t have to accept any data loss and b) because the few hundred now make their own backups and realize that they are contributing something to their data security.

In addition, uploading the photos from my cell phone to the myCloud works quite well for my needs. This means I can document the working day with my cell phone, and when I get home in the evening, the few photos that I need to provide are already in the cloud and I can simply pull them down from there. Of course there are alternatives, but why should I change something as long as it works?

Is it worth the effort for Swisscom to develop this further? It’s clear! In 5 years this world will certainly no longer look the same as it does today. It remains to be seen whether myCloud will still exist. Maybe it’s a product that has a different name, works a little differently, but certainly benefits from myCloud’s experience.

I can choose what I want, who I trust with my data, and ultimately where my data is in the cloud. Therefore, keep your post a bit pretentious

Thomas

The remark about the “Grandma’s Föteli” is also not necessarily appropriate, many users appreciate that they can show their holiday photos via the TV-Box without any fuss and these are not just grandmas and grandpas, but younger semesters.

In the beginning, the emphasis was on image storage and only over time was the whole thing expanded.

Around 100 users out of over 400 thousand were affected by the whole problem, according to the Tagesschau from July 12, 2019.

When you sometimes see Windows or Apple messing around with millions of users when updating, you usually don’t hear anything about an apology.

Hello @Bea26

The problem was in 2018 and not 14 days ago. It was a one-time problem. We called everyone affected and informed them openly and transparently. In almost all cases, customers also had a local copy so that the data was not lost.

We are aware that such errors should not occur and we very much regret it. We’ve worked hard to make the myCloud environment better.

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@HeMan wrote:

Quote from a major Swiss tabloid:

3. The customers’ files are stored unencrypted on MyCloud and, according to the Tamedia newspapers, can be freely viewed by service employees. Is that correct?

With international competitors like Dropbox, all data is encrypted and can only be viewed by the customer. At Swisscom, the transmission of data to MyCloud is encrypted, but the data storage is not, write the Tamedia newspapers.

Huber contradicts: “The data cannot be viewed ‘freely’ by anyone other than the user themselves, but is stored in pieces in packages.” Only when accessed by the user would the parts be put together by the software and delivered to the user.

Such quibbles don’t exactly inspire confidence. It would be informative to know how big the hurdles to access actually are for employees or what type of employee has this permission, under what conditions this is exercised and how compliance with the rules is ensured. Without clear assurances in this regard, especially in small Switzerland, it should not simply be assumed that with 20,000 Swisscom employees, not one of my acquaintances or neighbors could use the software mentioned in the quote. Then it’s much better to use Google or OneDrive, at least the (un)probability ratio is better there! :")

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Mycloud also uses mongodb. And the packet size is 64MB by default!

So this “fragmentation” of the files happens in 64MB packages. Or something smaller, for example. 32MB if set that way. In good German. The majority of the files are not divided into pieces at all, but rather in packages as a whole! distributed, as individual files are often smaller than 32/64MB.

All of this unencrypted.

If there is a security problem, the data is stolen as it was uploaded, i.e. unencrypted for the normal user.

My pro tip. When a cloud provider works so poorly. Delete files from this cloud immediately.

The fact that data was lost is embarrassing but hardly problematic. Certainly no customer has used storage as the sole and exclusive location of their data. Not even Swisscom customers are that naive 😁 Or.

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@Tux0ne wrote:

My pro tip. When a cloud provider works so poorly. Delete files from this cloud immediately.

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Unnecessary effort. Just wait a few days and they’ll accidentally delete your data anyway

Here is the appropriate sign for the topic:

No need to say more.

You cannot hand over responsibility to others.

@marcus

I like your sign and you’re basically right, but I wouldn’t want to go to court with Swisscom that harshly.

I think IT professionals also deserve a little pity for this very unusual mistake.

And it is of course also true that it is not a good idea for a cloud operator to hand over the complete backup responsibility of the effective cloud data stocks to the data suppliers, because some myCloud users have now conclusively proven this with their individual data losses.

.. I find it strange that no backup is available at Swisscom. Normally every storage has a shadow copy function.

By the sign I also meant the user. If you only rely on one storage device, you should no longer worry about the importance of your data.

A 4TB external hard drive currently costs CHF 79 (!!).