Could.
The other person could also just terminate/block it.
I trust a large company that I have a paid contract with for service more than i trust randoms on the internet.
Its being presented as part of a backup strategy. If i can’t rely on it (whether or not it is a secondary backup or tertiary or whatever), what’s the point?
I too have at least 3-4 copies of my important data. Point being:
- if it offers no additional cover, being unreliable, why bother
I’d say the p2p tracker for encrypted community backups is probably a better idea.
Then it sounds like this idea is not for you
Since you are against the idea, it has no point for you. I don’t really understand why people come on here that have no need for it, so then argue the topic… Don’t like it, don’t use it
I outlined a few points in the original topic, but here are some more
- Its fun
- Its cheap/free
- It offers much more flexibility
- Actual hands on the other end
Doing this with someone I think is fun, so it’s worth it right there even if its just a secondary cloud backup
The other point is that its free. I have some data like my Veeam backups that I would like in the cloud, but to get them into the cloud would cost a bit of money a month that I just don’t want to spend. If I could get it somewhere for free, great
Additionally to the point of being flexible, getting Veeam backups into the cloud is a pain in the ass. Without setting up a SOBR, you can only do copy jobs to AWS/Azure, which of course cost too much money. But, it would be easy for me to host someones Veeam backups and vice versa
If you have mission critical data you need backed up, yeah, don’t use this maybe?
I’ve been following this thread… and I was going to post a few times, but then realized, yeah, it’s not for me.
I think it boils down to - if 2 or more people can agree on some common terms, then have at it. Whether that’s colo, shared resources, torrenting, sharing passwords, moving in together, or whatever else.
I think most of the solutions or options in here won’t work for me, but maybe they can work for some one else. I think a good outcome is if this thread turned into a “hey, this is what I am offering, is anyone willing to reciprocate?” It’s less about finding solutions to problems that don’t exist, and more about finding groups of people with similar needs/wants.
Good luck!
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Exactly!
I’m doing this with one person already in Sweden, and it’s nice to have a borg backup of my most important data (300GB~) in a COMPLETELY different geolocation
Currently my main file cloud backups are in Oregon, which is far enough from Houston, but having that extra copy far away is great
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Out of curiosity, I will ask… How do you do it technically. did you exchange sbc?
Yeah slapping them on a vpn works to but generally when i’ve done it i find it’s handy if they get a static ip which you can buy for vpns but generally i just prefer doing it myself
Debian VM on his side for me, and Ubuntu on my side for him (He like Ubuntu 
)
On his side I just have a VM with 1TB of disk, however he manages that. On my end for him I have a VM with 30GB disk and then mounted SMB storage
I have my VM connected back to my network with OpenVPN (Yes, I know I should move it to Wireguard), so I don’t need any ports on his end which is good, because he’s CGNAT
I’m not against the idea in principle, I’m against the idea of setting it up in a way that will be fragile/worthless and relies on trust. Humans aren’t trustworthy either by incompetence (other user gets owned) or malice (other user reneges on the deal when you need your stuff back). Relying on human trust is how we end up with broken shit like sendmail and FTP.
hence by suggestion that the distributed p2p backup suggested by @TimHolus above is probably the better way to go about it.
You can have all that and also make it not susceptible to single point (the user you pair with) of failure. If you can’t rely on a backup method, there’s little point in doing it. You’re just pissing into the wind; this could be engineered to be better.
How? Community tracker; all data is encrypted and no individual knows who’s data is who’s other than their own (that matches their private key). Terms of service: you need to maintain a minimum of two data-sets in addition to your own, you can select which ones to mirror (Alternatively you are simply assigned the datasets with the least seeds). I don’t know how to implement that myself, but it would provide resiliency at least and incentivise users to maintain their end of the service.
You’d have to determine a reasonable maximum size for this (might I suggest say, 4 GB - that should be enough for people’s properly critical data). Or split into tiers. If you want to back up 300 GB for example you need to maintain 600 GB for others.
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I think we are on 2 completely different pages here. Both you and @timholus seem to want a completely different solution. Have you thought about just making a new thread?
The entire point of my idea is that there is NOT an engineered solution, so your point about it being engineered better is worthless, because its not engineered to begin with. It’s completely up to the 2 people
Terms of service? data caps? This is not what this is about.
Sounds like my suggestions are covered by that. But hey, I’ll leave this thread now, you’re not interested in making it actually work.
I don’t see anyone actually doing it though, just arguing how its a bad idea…
Gentlemens, let’s keep the level of discussion at a high level !!! 
Everyone has the right to throw out their opinion. There is no point in putting pressure on yourself, it is a public discussion and an exchange of views. Not everyone will always agree with everyone.
Imho we just discuss and express different perceptions on the topic. Normal brain storm process… You also have to be prepared for it, starting any thread in a public place.
There are several different concepts emerging from the topic, but that’s okay, and it’s positive imho. 
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