Tresorit - Cloud storage service (FREE) - Mini-Review. (WARNING!)

[Deozaan]

XIV Inactive Free Accounts
62. If You have chosen a plan with no charge ("Free Account") and if Your Free Account was inactive for at least one-hundred and twenty (120) days and no valid User Plan is bound to Your Free Account, Tresorit will send You a notice. Fifteen (15) days after such notice, Tresorit may suspend Your Free Account or delete all of Your Content related to Your Free Account, and/or we may terminate the Agreement between You and Tresorit.

-IainB (June 04, 2015, 05:03 AM)

The policy itself of deleting "inactive" accounts that aren't paying for service doesn't really bother me.

The question, really, is did you receive the notification emails about the deletion of your account, and if not, why not?

[TaoPhoenix]

I have a little bit of experience here because I see these kinds of programs as just "fancier" versions of a survey I did a while back on FreeWebSpace.net
(Heh Damnit, Nostalgia, now I have to go post a 6-month update over there!)

Seraphim, you might want to chime in if nothing else but for milk and cookies!
: )

Seraphim Labs was one of my winners because in my survey period, I actively looked at these kinds of expiration periods for free accounts, and severely downrated any service that enforced them. To me, it seemed that if you're running a backup service, you can expect a lot of stationary data. My opinion is they want the logins that fast to force page views of their ads or whatever for little pennies of revenue. When I did my survey, one point I argued was that an expiration period should be at least a year.

I would advise anyone looking into any kind of these data services to check the expirations as "part of the whole package reviews". Because if you have say four options to choose from, and one has some important features but a mean expiration timer clock, you just get ruthless and because half of you are programmers, just make a script that says "Oh yeah? You guys think you are hot stuff because you can delete my account and play little power games? Well, I have some VERY important pictures of Stegosauruses you MUST not delete, that I update regularly. Oh look, I'm not seeing your little ads because a script is updating my account. So take your little plastic power sword and go away."

[IainB]

...To me, it seemed that if you're running a backup service, you can expect a lot of stationary data. ...
________________________

-TaoPhoenix (June 04, 2015, 06:57 PM)

Having been responsible for the configuration and review of operational backup procedures for several large data centers, I can confirm that this is exactly one of the things that one would expect and find in practice.
Furthermore, I can confirm that the usual working definition of "secure storage" in IT parlance would not include the risk that any user's data would get deleted within X days if it had not been accessed - that would be preposterous, and is the main reason why I am so embarrassed about having missed this in the Ts & Cs and recommended the service. It would not be correct to call that a "secure storage service", by definition. If it was called such, then it would be blatantly misleading.

[wraith808]

The policy itself of deleting "inactive" accounts that aren't paying for service doesn't really bother me.

-Deozaan (June 04, 2015, 02:41 PM)

But what does "inactive" entail?  It appears from IainB's account, if you don't actively *use* it, it's inactive.  I don't actively use copy- I just keep it installed because I have a lot of free space from referrals and might us it at some point.  But it's installed on my machines and running.  That should be considered "use".

[TaoPhoenix]

XIV Inactive Free Accounts
62. If You have chosen a plan with no charge ("Free Account") and if Your Free Account was inactive for at least one-hundred and twenty (120) days and no valid User Plan is bound to Your Free Account, Tresorit will send You a notice. Fifteen (15) days after such notice, Tresorit may suspend Your Free Account or delete all of Your Content related to Your Free Account, and/or we may terminate the Agreement between You and Tresorit.

-IainB (June 04, 2015, 05:03 AM)

The policy itself of deleting "inactive" accounts that aren't paying for service doesn't really bother me.

The question, really, is did you receive the notification emails about the deletion of your account, and if not, why not?

-Deozaan (June 04, 2015, 02:41 PM)

Well, since the point of a data backup in the cloud is supposed to be super security, it *would* bother me like here if they made their deletion policy that aggressive!

It's a *backup* service, how are they deciding that for example "data from January isn't active and needed in April, ho hum, it's three months later?!"  Just as one example, Tax Season does that every year, or all accountants' quarterly filing preps, or making Christmas preparations in September, and so on!

Even for "hobbyist" providers, I advocated a year's minimum time to assume the account is active, and I think two years is a good idea. If they're trying to nuke data every three months, it's like when I studied free hosting providers and we called that "overselling".

So I'm pretty heavily with Iain, what we're not seeing is what revenue they think they are getting by trying to get so nasty starting closeout procedures so soon. And since everyone seems to want phone numbers these days, it might be interesting if a phone call was an alternate method to try to reach a customer if their data is about to be deleted.

Because not many people have THIRD backups, so this could cause catastrophic losses of time/money/energy/data requirements retention risk and more, *just because some data company is bored and can't be bothered to keep your data for more than a quarter.*

[IainB]

This is my latest reply to Tresorit Customer Service: (following on from the above)

2015-06-05:
Hello X,
Many thanks for your email (below) explaining what has happened. I now understand why my account would have been deleted.

I checked back to the New Terms and Conditions of Use as at 2013-11-11 that I was obliged to agree to if I wished to continue using the "free" service, per the startup notice in the Tresorit application at that time.

Though I had not noticed it, the Ts & Cs clearly state (sXIV):

XIV Inactive Free Accounts
62. If You have chosen a plan with no charge ("Free Account") and if Your Free Account was inactive for at least one-hundred and twenty (120) days and no valid User Plan is bound to Your Free Account, Tresorit will send You a notice. Fifteen (15) days after such notice, Tresorit may suspend Your Free Account or delete all of Your Content related to Your Free Account, and/or we may terminate the Agreement between You and Tresorit.

However, this point is not mentioned (though it arguably should have been) in section XIX Termination by Tresorit.

I could find no email in my inbox from Tresorit giving notice of imminent account deletion. However, after digging into my email backup archive, I discovered in the archive that I had received one email from Tresorit (not 3 as you suggest) giving 15 days' notice of account deletion/termination. I had not seen this email at the time - it was at a point when I had been away and came back to an overflowing mailbox, and I suspect the Tresorit email was inadvertently picked up as spam and deleted. My apologies.

Nevertheless, the Ts & Cs clearly state "…will send You a notice", and one notice had indeed been sent, so I can't fault Tresorit on that score.

So, back to the possibility of recovering my deleted Tresorit. Is it the case that it is physically impossible to restore it? I had always regarded the definition of "secure storage" as meaning just that - i.e., secure/permanently fixed - barring potential accidental loss/fire, Acts of God, etc.

So, could you please advise whether you will, or refuse, to restore the deleted Tresorit from backup?

As an "early adopter", I joined Tresorit on 2013-04-12 with the sincere belief and on the understanding that Tresorit offered secure, reliable, and encrypted storage - and I advised many people to consider putting their storage with Tresorit for FREE. I am now embarrassed to have to tell them that I had made a huge (albeit genuine) mistake about the Ts & Cs. For example, please refer to Tresorit - Cloud storage service (FREE) - Mini-Review. (WARNING!)

By the way, I have tried, but am still unable to access my account, though you say it should be accessible now. I shall keep trying. Maybe I am doing something wrong? Could you please tell me the precise procedure I need to follow?

Thankyou in anticipation.

Regards,