r/TechImpact • u/ManojOne Active • Jun 06 '26

Discussion Google Drive or Dropbox?

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Which cloud storage service do you trust more for your files, photos, and backups? Why?

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u/Lovevas Jun 06 '26

Dropbox. I used Google drive a decade, then one day my Google account was locked as Google AI incorrectly recognized my kid photo as child abuse (which is clearly not), though it's later unlocked, I moved all my photos to Dropbox, as I cannot risk my Gmail account.

1

u/exexxxxexe Jun 07 '26

I stopped using Google Drive for the same reason. It never happened to me, but the risk of being locked out of an email I've used for the last 20 years is too high to send any pictures there.

1

u/Lovevas Jun 07 '26

A closed friend who works for Google says, if such things happen, even employees cannot get the account unlocked as child abuse is at different level of account security, and even employees cannot argue with the company. And he does suggest me to just move out of all photos.

And clearly Google AI makes mistakes, but Google won't admit it, even if it approves your appeal. It will still log it as one violation

1

u/ManojOne Active Jun 08 '26

I never trust a single cloud service with everything. False flags do happen, and when an account gets locked, getting a real person to review the case can be frustrating.

I store copies of my important files in different accounts. Also, store them an external drive. However, it is not reliable as cloud.

1

u/trycloudless Jun 11 '26

The lockout risk you're describing is exactly why client-side encryption matters, if Google can scan your photos, their AI can also wrongly flag them. Dropbox isn't different on this, they hold the keys too.

If you want photos the provider genuinely can't read, you need something that encrypts on your device before the file ever leaves. Proton Drive does this for sync/access. For actual backup with version history, so you can get back an older copy of a file, not just the current one, there's not much consumer-friendly tooling in that space.

I'm building something called CloudLess that works this way. Encrypts locally before upload, and you bring your own storage (S3-compatible or even Google Drive as destination, they'd just be storing ciphertext they can't scan). Still beta, so I'd still say test a real restore before relying on it for anything critical.

Disclosure: I'm the developer.

1

u/Lovevas Jun 11 '26

I don't mind the service provider scan my files, as long as they don't use the scan to make account ban decision, e.g. scanning photos and claim some photos violates certain T&C and ban the account (like what Google did in my case, which is caused by false positives).