Google Cloud Accidentally Deletes $125 Billion Pension Fund’s Online Account
A major mistake in setup caused Google Cloud and UniSuper to delete the financial service provider’s private cloud account.
This event has caused many to worry about the security and dependability of cloud services, especially for big financial companies.
The outage started in the blue, and UniSuper’s 620,000 members had no idea what was happening with their retirement funds.
Services didn’t start again until Thursday, and the fund promised its members that investment account amounts would be updated as soon as possible, even though they were still showing numbers from the previous week.
Joint Statement and Apology
According to the Guardian reports, the CEOs of UniSuper and Google Cloud, Peter Chun and Thomas Kurian, apologized for the failure together in a statement, which is not often done.
“This incident is an exceptional and singular occurrence that has not happened with any client of Google Cloud on a global scale before.” This ought not to have occurred. Google Cloud has implemented preventative measures in response to the identified events that precipitated this disruption.
They said that the event was “extremely frustrating and disappointing” for members and caused by a “one-of-a-kind occurrence” in which UniSuper’s Private Cloud services were set up incorrectly, causing the fund’s cloud subscription to be deleted.
“UniSuper’s Private Cloud subscription was ultimately terminated due to an unexpected sequence of events that began with an inadvertent misconfiguration during provisioning,” the two sources stated. “Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has confirmed that the disruption was caused by an unprecedented sequence of events.”
Google is the most popular email provider (Gmail) contributes about 70% of the email traffic on earth and being one of the oldest mass adopted email service (passing 20 years old is a worth achievement for any application, especially a “free” one.
As a cyber security digital expert, I have raved about the free service, its novel cloud-based structure, and how and why is
While I’m tickled to have been an early adopter of now-successful technology, though, it’s important to know when enough is enough. For me, that time has come, and I’m moving my primary digital correspondence to privacy-focused Swiss provider Proton Mail. It’s been a long time coming.
Should I, or should I not be popular?
Google is a Mega Monopoly Email Provider: Legal, but is it Ethical?
We’ve seen a lot go down in the privacy and security realms over the last two decades. Google’s been far from the only culprit, but as the default search engine for most browsers and the curator of Android, the Play Store, Google Analytics, reCaptchas, and more, the Big G has more data on the average North American user than any other corporation.
I’m as far from paranoid as any internet user, and even I use a VPN (primarily for spoofing IP geolocation); while I don’t do anything nefarious, and nobody’s tracking me for anything other than advertising, I prefer knowing I’m a little safer from bad actors that can hijack the content I’m viewing and thus possibly my hardware.
But Google creeps me out, and I’m no longer comfortable using Gmail. The successors to the FAANG stocks, the MAMAA companies (Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet) own a considerable amount of not just forward-facing web resources but also the underlying infrastructure most of the world’s internet relies on. I can’t avoid my data passing through the Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services, but I can limit what sites and apps I actively engage with.
Gmail’s interface is fine, I guess, if somewhat cluttered and not very attractive
Google’s always innocent until it’s not
Until 2017, Google automatically scanned Gmail accounts for keywords that it then used to personalize ads within the platform and probably outside it, too. Here’s why that should terrify you:
It had likely been happening since Gmail’s launch
Scans included messages from non-Gmail accounts, presumably contributing to shadow accounts containing data on those users
Widespread publicity via a 2013 Microsoft ad campaign and lawsuit the same year failed to stop it
Google’s proposed settlement was rejected for being overly vague and failing to promise proper disclosure of data harvesting practices
I’m under no misconception that I can extricate myself entirely from Google’s clutches; It’s too ubiquitous, and tons of common apps and services rely on its wide range of services. But I’ll do what I can, which includes moving to Proton Mail, a privacy-centric email provider with encrypted, underground servers, practically the polar opposite of Alphabet Inc.
Google paid over $26 billion in 2021 to remain the default search engine in various browsers
The surprisingly easy switch to Proton Mail
Why Proton Mail is my new favorite email provider
My own Proton account has been used as a backup since 2018. Moat recently though, it has now become my primary email for both personal and business.
I tested a trial of ProtonVPN a few years afo (ProtonVPN was a bit slow back then, but I and other cyber security expert highly recommend it as one of today’s top VPNs) due to its increased infrastructure and massive much faster speed. They have quadrupled the number of Servers globally since 2021).
I made the jump many years ago (2018) and highly recommend it to all of you going forward – primarily due to Proton’s comprehensive set of features, as well as the policies it enacts to keep your data private.
Among Proton’s consumer-friendly practices:
It opposes data harvesting, ads, and trackers (even the subversive tracking that comes from opening third-party-hosted images)
It falls under Switzerland’s privacy jurisdiction and isn’t subject to US surveillance
Theoretically, no other human can view your emails. In fact, if you lose and need to reset your password, you’ll lose access to previous messages, an impressive layer of security against hacking
Support for end-to-end encryption between Proton users and password protection for external emails
Open-source encryption (including optional PGP signing) and independent auditing to ensure strict adherence to standards
A few clicks, and I never have to access my Gmail page again
Compared to my first brief look years ago, Proton’s UI and general implementation have matured significantly. It was also a breeze to sit back and observe how easy it was to have over 100 (128 and counting!) forward over 100 (121 and counting!) of my Client’s perform the action of transferring each of their current Gmail messages to their now-primary Proton address, and the calendar appears to have integrated well, with alerts showing up consistently on both Android and iPhones without problems.
They are perfectly happy with the features provided by Proton’s most affordable tier, the Mail Plus plan. You can create 10 separate addresses and even a custom domain, as well as shorten the default existing domain to pm.me (because @protonmail.com is, admittedly, a bit of a mouthful).
It includes 15GB of storage, unlimited folders and filters, and can do everything I ever wanted my Gmail account to do. Most importantly, it keeps their permanent correspondence out of Alphabet’s umbrella and especially any private or confidential emails, as well as people who send it to them that don’t even use Gmail!
Proton offers diverse Subscription Plans (including Free!)
You can actually use Proton Mail entirely for free, although it does have restrictions: You are limited to 150 emails per day and 1GB of storage, can’t create custom addresses or domains, and won’t have access to the calendar, or the encrypted password manager and unlimited VPN offered by the Proton Unlimited subscription. But even the free tier is visually and more private and securr, as well as overall being much better than Gmail.
Committing to 1 or 2 years of the $5/month low tier drops the price to $4 or $3.50, respectively.
The Unlimited tier will set you back $10 or $8 per month at those same subscription lengths and afford you 500GB of storage, 15 custom addresses, 3 custom domains, and unlimited VPN and Proton Pass (its password manager) access. There is also a six-user family plan starting at $30 and three tiers of slightly more business-focused options.
But I’m really not advertising for Proton here. I’m just choosing to actively take my digital footprint back into my own hands in a way many of us haven’t done since Gmail’s massive rise over a decade ago. It’s well overdue, and over the few weeks I’ve used Proton Mail full-time, I can’t say I regret it or will ever look back.
In this digital age of 2024 and beyond, information and data is needed as the air we breathe, the tools we use to sift through data should uplift, not undermine, our quest for knowledge.
Yet, here we are, navigating the choppy waters of search engines like Bing and Google, only to find ourselves awash in a sea of advertisements, our privacy eroded by relentless tracking, and our quest for truth skewed by biased algorithms.
Does that seem okay to you?
These platforms, once hailed as the lighthouses of the information age, now seem more like will-o’-the-wisps leading men to their deaths in murky bogs. Radicalization through search engine commercialization is actually a real problem. For everything that Google has claimed, it is fighting against such things, the work of non-biased researchers like Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin have proven that these companies can’t ever fulfill their promises… not when they rely on radicalization to help line their shareholder’s wallets.
Folks – it is jut not Google (Alpha) that does this! Today we face a plethora of Social Media “trackers” and “data miners” that commercialize every step and action that you take online within their platform for full disclosure. This article is just sharing with you that browsers such as Google (and its email product called Gmail) tracks, profits, and commercializes everything that you do in it.
Stract: A New Open Source, customizable search engine.
This innovative search engine feels like a callback to an earlier Internet age, when our networks were meant to be part of a free, open-source ecosystem.
Now, to be clear, Stract is in early “Beta” stage. This simply means that it is lacking many “normal” features that are common in modern browsers. You will not be using it for your daily browsing quite yet (I recommend Vivaldi, Brave (which offers Staking Rewards as well) and DuckDuckGo for the time being). That said, it has WONDERFUL potential.
The top ten main features of Stract include:
Open Source: Stract is entirely open-source, promoting transparency and community collaboration in its development and enhancement.
Customization: The platform stands out for its high degree of customizability, allowing users to tailor their search…
Advanced Search Capabilities: Stract offers advanced search capabilities, including Boolean operators, filters, and facets, empowering users to refine their searches with precision and efficiency.
Natural Language Processing (NLP): Leveraging cutting-edge NLP algorithms, Stract understands and interprets natural language queries, ensuring accurate search results even for complex or ambiguous queries.
Personalization: Stract employs sophisticated personalization algorithms to deliver tailored search results based on user preferences, search history, and behavior, enhancing the overall search experience and relevance of results.
Scalability: Built on a scalable architecture, Stract seamlessly handles large volumes of data and user queries, ensuring fast and reliable search performance even as data volumes grow.
Federated Search: Stract supports federated search capabilities, enabling users to search across multiple data sources and repositories from a single interface, eliminating the need to switch between different applications or platforms.
Real-time Indexing: With real-time indexing capabilities, Stract ensures that new content is immediately available for search, providing users with up-to-date and relevant information at all times.
Integration Options: Stract offers seamless integration with a wide range of third-party applications, databases, and content management systems, allowing users to leverage their existing infrastructure and workflows.
Analytics and Insights: Stract provides powerful analytics and insights into search behavior, user interactions, and content usage, enabling organizations to gain valuable insights and optimize their search strategies for better performance and user satisfaction.
Overall, Stract offers a comprehensive and feature-rich search solution that EMPOWERS users to find relevant information quickly and efficiently. It is also the ideal choice for individuals and organizations seeking a powerful and 100% CUSTOMIZABLE search engine for their own needs, wishes, and goals. In summary, if you are familiar with technology and don't expect a full-blown Browser experience without a few minor speed bumps, it is highly recommended to check Stract out here: https://stract.com/about
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