insta_anon

A couple of days ago I got the following mail:

Hello,

We’re sending this communication regarding backup and policy updates to CrashPlan for Small Business.

Starting October 20, 2021, we will release a series of automatic updates to implement the following changes on all devices:

  - Minimum backup frequency and version retention settings of 30 minutes
  - Deleted files retention limited to 90 days
  - Additional file exclusions

We are making these changes as part of our continued commitment to safeguarding backup integrity while keeping our service price competitive. These changes are mandatory and it is not possible to opt out. If you’ve deleted files from your computer that you would like to retain, you’ll need to restore them before October 20.

So far I was able to keep my deleted files in my backups forever, which for instance allowed me to restore a Bitcoin wallet.dat from 2013. Naturally I'd like to keep this setting and not have my backups retroactively purged.

Therefore I now want to start looking for an alternative solution with following features:

  - multiple destinations possible (e.g. Dropbox, SFTP, Hard drive)
  - encryption of files before they are uploaded
  - incremental backups
  - file versioning
  - point-in-time recovery of files (to avoid ransomware issues)
  - retention of deleted files possible

So far I've been recommended https://www.arqbackup.com/index.html which looks like it ticks most boxes.

What other solutions and approaches for macOS can you recommend?

Where are you currently living, what were the reasons for moving there and what are the pros / cons?

Also say you work remotely, are self-employed / working on a new idea or are (financially) retired and could live anywhere on this beautiful planet, where would you go?

I recently had an interesting observation concerning the Instagram app and the account matching algorithm(s) that Facebook uses and would like to ask for your opinions.

Following scenario: I have an iPhone X running iOS 11.3.1 with FB Messenger and Whatsapp installed, but not the Facebook app. Messenger doesn't have access to my contacts but WhatsApp does. A couple days ago I installed Instagram from the App Store and created an IG account using an email like this <lots_of_gibberish>@<domain>.com (I have a catch-all setup for this domain). I didn't give IG access to my contacts, didn't provide my phone number nor connected it to Facebook.

At first the suggestions for new contacts in IG were completely random. However, after about 20-30 seconds the list of suggestions updated and showed me IG accounts of friends on Facebook.

I repeated this experiment, deleted / installed the app, checked the iOS privacy controls, made sure not to enter the phone number or allow access to contacts, and again, I got the same account suggestions from FB friends.

I don't undestand how Facebook / Instagram is able to pull this off. The Instagram account email hasn't been used at all before, the app doesn't have access to my contacts and doesn't know my phone number. AFAIK iOS apps are sandboxed and can't fingerprint the device nor access each others cookies? So that leaves matching by IP and / or location, however in a large building that would be quite inaccurate?

So how does Facebook do this?