Recovering Humax zero length files

On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 12:37:52 -0600, "Steve Thackery"
wrote:

Roderick Stewart wrote:

And who else would have access to the copies of all your files on the
(formerly) Dropbox servers? What happens to bankrupt equipment?

I didn't disagree that part of the argument, because I agree with it!!

So, I never put my most confidential documents on there. In fact there
are very few - almost everything of mine would be of little interest to
anyone else.

You do seem to have thought about what you're doing, but that last bit
is dangerously akin to "nothing to hide so nothing to fear", which
must be one of the most insidiously specious notions ever invented.

It's a judgement call, obviously. For me, I find it a great facility,
but I only use it for documents that are currently "live" and I
frequently work on from home, university, a friend's house, etc. And I
don't put anything that would be embarrassing or confidential on there.

Anybody who uses cloud storage as their sole backup would be nuts,
obviously.

Complete detachment from the "cloud" is probably impossible nowadays,
as even owning a mobile phone can give unspecified others the means to
know where you are. It seems an unavoidable feature of modern life
that we are all effectively tagged and photographed wherever we go,
and anything we say can be taken down and used against us, not
necessarily with proper regard for its context, at any time.

Rod.

tim...... wrote:

But that's what they are selling

Who is? Where? As a *sole* backup solution?

--
SteveT

In article ,
says...

On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 19:29:32 -0000, Yellow wrote:

I didn't use the system long enough to become unlucky, just long
enough for me to realise it was a bad idea. Aren't we always being
warned about allowing others access to our computers,

No.

and that we
should take steps to prevent it?

Again - no. And if you did block access you would no longer find the
internet of any use to you because it simply would not work.

So what do firewalls and antivirus software do then, if not block
access to things on my computer whilst allowing selected access to the
outside world? And isn't it generally considered sensible to use them?

They are used to protect your computer from unauthorised access to your
computer.


But then perhaps you think the very post you are looking at now arrived
on your machine without interaction between your computer and the
outside world.

I think it arrived here because my computer made a request to a
server, not the other way round.

You arrived here through inter-action between your computer and other
computers on the internet - the traffic is not all one way and the
software on your computer talks quite cheerfully to others to get the
task done.

I realise my understanding of how
torrents work is incomplete, but I think I have grasped the
essentials, and one feature that did cach my attention is that it's a
two-way arrangement. If I want to download a file, it arrives
piecemeal from lots of other people's computers which have to be
requested to provide the pieces. Likewise, my computer has to make
available a designated part of its file system for others to make
similar requests to me.

Indeed - one file, not the entire contents of your hard drive.


That's the bit that concerns me. It may be that the torrent system is
only supposed to allow access to certain designated areas, but they
are effectively offered to the entire world, so if there is any
weakness that could allow someone access to anything beyond the
intended boundaries, it would only be a matter of time before somebody
found it.

That is true of all software including your operating system and your
browser and all your browser plug-ins.

More than a decade after Windows XP was written, Microsoft,
the very people who wrote it, are still occasionally finding and
correcting security weaknesses that nobody spotted before, because
they could allow unintended access to user data, and that's in
software that doesn't explicitly offer part of itself to the world.

So why don't you stop using your operating system and your browser and
every other bit of code on your computer that communicates with the
internet?

I am guessing the answer is that you consider the benefits of using the
software you choose to use outweighs the potential risks? That does not
mean the risks (whatever that might mean) are less - in fact it might
just mean you do not understand what the risks are - but that you have
made a judgment based on whatever personal criteria you have chosen to
allow you to sleep at night.

Being frightened of something that you do not understand is simply being
frightened of something because you do not understand it.

Being "frightened" of something isn't the same as simply deciding not
to use it because I don't think it has anything to offer me that would
outweigh the perceived risk.

Bingo! I wrote the above reply to you before I read this bit of your
reply.

It's a considered choice, not fear. I'm
not "frightened" of my computer being completely trashed, because I
know I can rebuild it, but I'd rather not suffer the nuisance.

Thinking your computer might get "trashed" is a little over dramatic,
don't you think? Personally, I'm much more frightened of Windows Update
than I would ever be of downloaded an episode of Breaking Bad or Game of
Thrones. :-)

On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 11:01:09 +0000, Roderick Stewart
wrote:

On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 02:43:17 -0000, Yellow wrote:

[re torrents]

Perhaps you have just been unlucky as I have always found torrents a
useful resource, whether I am using the technology to download an update
or a file for my course (as interestingly lots of colleges and
universities use torrents) or trying to locate a tv show I have missed
for some reason.

I didn't use the system long enough to become unlucky, just long
enough for me to realise it was a bad idea. Aren't we always being
warned about allowing others access to our computers, and that we
should take steps to prevent it? The torrent system seems to require
my computer being deliberately made available to the entire world for
the entire time it is in use. I don't know the technical details of
exactly how much access this entire planet full of strangers would
have, or exactly what they would be able to do to extend it, but it
seems to me it would be foolhardy to take chances.



There's always some risk when connecting a computer to the www. True,
it's at its highest with microsoft windows, in part because it's the
largest monoculture OS for the bad guys to prey upon ( a situation not
helped by the "ease of use over security" attitude by MS themselves).

Even the more obscure *nix based OSen carry some risk (a vanishingly
small one as far as the OS itself is concerned - most of the risk is
to the windows machines which may be relying on the file shares held
on the *nix based PCs).

In this case, the biggest risk lies with the browser used to search
for and download the torrent control files required by the torrent
clients rather than with the torrent clients themselves.

If you feel happier about downloading on line content directly from
server based sources in the conventional way, the risks are actually
higher than downloading via a torrent client. The other main risk
which applies regardless of downloading methodology, lies with the
content of the downloaded files themselves. An effective AV should
address that one equally well (or not) regardless of whether it's a
direct download or a torrent.

The only files the rest of the www have access to are those
explicitly made available by your chosen torrent client (whether it be
a desktop or server hosted one). Since, in your case, these files are
ones you've acquired via the torrent seeds you've leeched from, you're
not giving anything away that hasn't already been downloaded by all
and sundry anyway.

Even if you misconfigure your torrent client to use the whole of your
drive C, you still have to explicitly share each file or folder before
it can be accessed by the www. You'd need to jump through a few hoops
before this can happen.

Also, I'm pretty sure there remains the issue of 'publishing' the
associated torrent control files via a suitable tracker site before
you can see any such undesirable activity (I'm no expert on submitting
torrent sources but that is my vague understanding of the process -
ICBA googling for more info on this aspect of torrenting).

In short, you're being needlessly paranoid over using a torrent
client versus the good old fashioned direct download methods provided
by whatever web browser 'rocks your boat'.
--
Regards, J B Good

On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 21:35:26 +0100, tim......
wrote:

We all know what happens to clouds - they either vapourise without
warning, or they **** all over you.

and the people who run "clouds" can't understand why corporates wont use
them

Forget clouds, I don't trust our corporate IT people. After 15 years ago
they lost some very important files, which just spontaneously disappeared
one day and I didn't discover the loss until about a week or so later.
It was a nightmare to get them restored and they wanted a fat fee for
doing it.
I removed the files on to my own machines' storage after that and
handle my own backups. No more grief since then and it's a lot more
convenient operationally.

"Paul Ratcliffe" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 21:35:26 +0100, tim......
wrote:

We all know what happens to clouds - they either vapourise without
warning, or they **** all over you.

and the people who run "clouds" can't understand why corporates wont use
them

Forget clouds, I don't trust our corporate IT people. After 15 years ago
they lost some very important files, which just spontaneously disappeared
one day and I didn't discover the loss until about a week or so later.

At least they are accountable to the same people that you are.

Clouds are not

tim

On Sat, 18 Jan 2014 16:43:33 +0100, tim......
wrote:

and the people who run "clouds" can't understand why corporates wont use
them

Forget clouds, I don't trust our corporate IT people. After 15 years ago
they lost some very important files, which just spontaneously disappeared
one day and I didn't discover the loss until about a week or so later.

At least they are accountable to the same people that you are.

No, they were outsourced years ago, so they are accountable to their
(foreign?) owners/shareholders.