I read through all the FAQ material and saw the intro stuff. A question I have is: what will happen with old data. I read that you make 4 copies of every 1 MB chunk of data. What if I don’t need this data anymore, and I delete it? Do the copies get deleted too? What if my computer crashes and I lose my account, is this data then “orphaned” in the SAFE Network? Is there a kind of “garbage collection” process where this “orphaned data” is cleaned up? I imagine that when the network is running for a long time and everybody starts using it, a certain percentage of orphaned data will exist. Maybe caused by people who create their own faulty clients who put data in the network but in the wrong way?
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No. The data stays forever.
The network doesn’t know who’s data it is, and they don’t know how many people they are saving copies for, so it cannot delete data safely.
Putting data on the network should cost accordingly… So we don’t need to worry about abuse etc…
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Thank you for your reply. How would this relate to the “right to be forgotten”? For example, someone could make a website anonymously, say something bad about some other person, put it on the SAFE Network, share it publicly, and it would remain there forever?
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SAFE is censorship resistant.
If something is published it does not get unpublished.
“Right to be forgotten” is censorship.
This is not a lot different than the way it works now – Celebrities frequently delete stuff and screenshots of their deleted stuff goes viral. You can legislate amnesia - but you can also legislate that the sun will rise 3 hours earlier - that doesn’t make it so. If a cat gets let out of a bag, there is no making a secret secret again.
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I see this question was asked and answered elsewhere too. Will the data be stored forever? - #3 by Teson
While such immutable data stays, if the data map is lost, the data is lost.
Also, consider the superior security and control of one’s own data inherent in the SAFE Network. No hacks like stealing and publishing all of Apples photos that it is holding for it’s users, because users control their own. Yeah it’s on the SAFE Network, but only they and those they specifically authorize have access to it.
Overall, a better option, I think.
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Yes, this is the unfortunate downside of this type of system. It will make it easy to bully and slander people. This is already possible now on the regular Internet, but it will become even easier to do it anonymously. However, it will also make it easier for suppressed people to get a voice. For good or for bad, the data stays forever.
Yes, but for public data it doesn’t help if you delete your datamap. Everyone else who still has a link to this content will be able to retrieve it, and can pass the link along if they wish. Once published data will remain public as long as someone has a link to it. This will make it easy to create a “way-back-machine”. At least this is my understanding of the network.
EDIT: My assumption is incorrect. See below
I’m afraid, that kind of hack would still happen when the SAFE-network was the one and only network-technology on the whole world. Simply because the weakest spot in security will always be the users computer. SAFE might be more secure, yes, but if someone doesn’t protect his or her password, it will still be possible to access his or her private data.
The point is that all the users photos stored by Apple are hacked as once. But on SAFE each user has to be hacked one by one. And only if their security is not adequate
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I would say that the weakest spot in security will only be the users computer, because right now the weakest spots are the servers (see http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/ or https://www.privacyrights.org/data-breach). The safe network will remove them completely and only the user negligence will remain.
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I think people would need to take a copy of the data map to do this - I’m pretty sure the link will not be enough, because I can share access with a URL. If I delete the data map, that URL will no longer work.
So you could create a “wayback machine”, but you’d need to do more than save the URL. You’d have to write a program to take a low level copy of the data map and then provide an App for someone to use those maps to access the original files. You wouldn’t be able to resurrect the original URL for example. I guess someone would do this, but to do this for all public files would be a major undertaking, because you’d have to pay for a lot of storage (even though it’s just for the data maps it will still add up). There would be added complications resurrecting complex data too - even a website - because the links may be broken, and dynamic websites wouldn’t work. In many cases you’d therefore have to store all the data, not just copy the map.
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Thanks for the correction, @happybeing.
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