[marklittlewood]

Is this a serious thing or are people always blinded by 'FREE'?

There is no way of getting information about the company on the company website, you have to go to the company web app.

So you get free unlimited storage, ad funded and to target you better with advertising they look at your content. This is hidden in the Terms of Service. https://beta.hive.im/terms/

At the company web app, there is no information about the company, the backers, the people etc. The 'about section' of the company is a bunch of marketing speak https://beta.hive.im/about/

There is an address if you look hard enough - in the Privacy section. https://beta.hive.im/privacy/ It is in Hong Kong. There is no information about team, backers etc.

Best of luck to anyone that tries this.

[andybak]

For the uses I have in mind they can pretty much do what they want with my data - including lose it without warning or send it the NSA.

But yes - not everyone is going to approach this with their eyes open.

As in all things there's a tradeoff. I am perfectly happy with the tradeoff Gmail offers me as long as I am kept informed and I'm happy with the tradeoff here - which is that I don't assume anything as I've never heard of the company.

So - I'm going to upload a huge directory of stuff that isn't personal and is already safely backed up. In return I get web access to it without paying a penny - and a 'sort-of' backup.

[freehunter]

Likewise, the biggest use I have for things like Dropbox or potentially Hive is to store my personal collection of guitar tabs that I've curated, so wherever I go I can still practice without having to remember to bring my tabs. I also keep a collection of educational PDFs and ebooks as well as some pictures I found on the Internet that I decided to keep for one reason or another in case I need to link to them on Reddit or send a funny gif to a friend. In college, I would put my notes there as well as homework assignments or group projects that I need to share with classmates. Hell, I don't even care if any of that were to be released to the public, let alone if the NSA or private companies are snooping on it.

Then again, I'm fully aware of the dangers of cloud solutions. Others are not. And that's the problem.

[msluyter]

Yeah, this is what I was thinking. Though I do have backups of my photos/music, in a worse case scenario in which all my drives were lost/stolen/eaten simultaneously I would lose everything. (This would be unlikely, because one is stored in a safety deposit box.) But a service like this would allow for one extra layer of redundancy with minimal downsides.

Create a giant tar.gz file, encrypt it, and store the encrypted file.

[rid]

After a bit of digging I found the product is built by http://www.qvivo.com

[imjk]

If you have any concerns, here's their support page: http://support.qvivo.com/

[marklittlewood]

Funny.

[crawlerguys]

So here is a review from us about Hive unlimited cloud storage, what do you think ? http://www.crawlerguys.com/hive-unlimited-free-cloud-storage...

[marklittlewood]

Well spotted. Qvivo seems to have the same approach to transparency as Hive unless I missed something? Almost all the links you can click on the Qvivo page go to email addresses, not other pages.

[orinocai]

I used to use Qvivo to store video in the cloud. According to their (now deleted) Twitter feed, Qvivo are also the creators of Hive.

However, Hive recently claimed (on their own Twitter feed) they don't know anything about Qvivo. Then, after some probing tweets, they backtracked and said they just use the same platform as Qvivo. All very suspicious.

Qvivo recently changed their business model to B2B and, without any communication, deleted all my media. I was gutted, but received no response from any support requests.

If Hive are anything to do with Qvivo, I'd beware.

[newscracker]

I have to admit they've got a nice enough name. But it's time services stop using the word "free" and instead admit to being "ad-supported" with clear upfront statements about how the business would survive. That kind of honesty would bring in better appreciation from users.

On a related note, free does not necessarily have to mean ad-supported if there are good backers, a good product and a good plan for the future (Trello is just one service I can think of that fits this description).

[freehunter]

I wouldn't be surprised to see this happen at some point. Already we're seeing the common app stores show "In-app purchases" next to or instead of the word "Free" to indicate that it's not really free.