Cloud storage is a service most people take for granted. It makes accessing files on multiple devices easy and lets you share those files with others with a click of a button. The average person can use cloud storage without thinking twice, but as usual, sex workers are in a position where what would be an otherwise useful tool for everyone else requires deep thought about how it impacts their life.
Cloud Storage Providers Don't Want Adult Content
All the major cloud storage providers make it clear in their terms of service that they do not want sex work related material on their platform:
Google Drive - "Do not distribute content that contains sexually explicit material, such as nudity, graphic sex acts, and pornographic material. This includes driving traffic to commercial pornography sites. We allow nudity for educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purposes"
Microsoft OneDrive - "Don't publicly display or use the Services to generate or share inappropriate content or material (involving, for example, nudity, bestiality, pornography, offensive language, graphic violence, self-harm, or criminal activity)"
Apple iCloud - "You agree that you will NOT use the Service to: upload, download, post, email, transmit, store, share, import or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harassing, threatening, harmful, tortious, defamatory, libelous, abusive, violent, obscene, vulgar, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or otherwise objectionable"
Dropbox - "publish, share or store materials that constitute child sexually exploitative material (including material which may not be illegal child sexual abuse material but which nonetheless sexually exploits or promotes the sexual exploitation of minors) or unlawful pornography or are otherwise indecent"
Google and Microsoft are direct with their desire to not have any naked bodies on their hard drives. Dropbox focuses on CSAM, but adds an "otherwise indecent" clause that lets them remove any adult content they consider "indecent". Apple surprisingly doesn't mention sexually explicit content or pornography at all in their iCloud terms of service, but the list of things they make you agree to not do are so vague that it's easy for sex related content to fall under those definitions.
This legalese gives all those companies legal protection to rummage through your files and delete anything they find that they don't like, regardless of whether content itself is legal in your jurisdiction.
We know they do this as there are countless stories on the internet from sex workers that have woken up one day to find their cloud storage account either missing files, restricted from sharing, or closed entirely, often without explanation or a vague, "you breached the terms of service, now go away and never come back" email.
Keep Your Data Separate
The two most popular use cases for cloud storage are storing your personal files, keeping them in sync across multiple devices and for sharing files with others without having to run your own web server.
Cloud storage is really useful so you shouldn't stop using it all together, but it's important to be aware of the risks of co-mingling data that the platforms don't like with data that everyone else stores without issue.
Real damage happens when not only are your files deleted, but your account is deleted too. It's not hard to imagine the huge headache having your Google, Microsoft or Apple account taken away from you. Things like passwords, emails, app downloads, and more are attached to your Google, Apple and Microsoft accounts. If they're closed down, you lose access to that data too!
Putting all your digital eggs in the one basket is a bad idea for most people, but a terrible idea for sex workers who are at a higher risk of getting their accounts closed or shadowbanned than the general community.
Splitting things up also provides some mitigation against account compromises. Someone trying to get access to your Google, Microsoft or Apple account is much more common than another random cloud storage provider. By splitting your data between multiple services, each with their own unique passwords and multi-factor authentication enabled, you limit the fallout should one service be compromised.
One strategy for combating an account deletion scenario is to keep your normie stuff like cat photos, recipes, whatever, with the Big Tech companies if you like, but store your more "sensitive" data somewhere more likely to not care, and encrypt it before sending it off to be shared with customers.
How Do I Encrypt My Data and Where Should I Keep It?
While all these cloud services say they encrypt your data for you, they have the encryption key and can look at your files whenever they like. It's only encrypted against someone that isn't you or the cloud provider viewing the data, so the only way to get some peace of mind is to encrypt any data yourself before sharing it with others – the use case that’ll most likely get your account and data deleted.
A quick and easy way is to use archiving software like WinRAR or 7zip on a Windows computer, WinRAR or ZArchiver on Android, or Keka on macOS and iOS, to create what's called a password protected archive. This collects a bunch of files into a single file in an "archive" and requires a password to open that archive up. You really want to use a long password too - 20 or more characters, with non-dictionary words, random letters, numbers and symbols. Don't forget to give the name of the file something mundane, as the automated scanners look for keywords in file names too.
It won't protect against the CIA or FBI, but will prevent any automated scripts running on a cloud storage provider from taking a look inside and will also add a layer of protection should the account be compromised and data stolen. Whoever steals the archive will also need the password in order to do anything with it.
Once you've encrypted anything sensitive, you still don't want to keep it anywhere with a policy of removing explicit content, so make sure to inspect the terms and conditions of any service you're interested in using and see if the type of content you're uploading is mentioned as not welcome there. If it is, move on, but if it isn't, upload away.
The downside of this approach is that you need to provide the password to anyone that you share the archive with, which should ideally be done using an end-to-end encrypted messaging service like Signal or WhatsApp, not via email or any other non-encrypted messaging service.
If you want to get fancy and encrypt everything in your cloud storage, not just files you share with others, a tool such as Cryptomator or Boxcryptor operate between your device and the cloud storage platform to encrypt everything transparently and automatically. While your files appear as normal on your device, these apps encrypt data as it’s uploaded and your files appear as random gibberish on the cloud storage platform.
Cloud Storage Can Be Safe If You’re Vigilant
The good news is that you don't have to stop using cloud storage entirely if you’re a sex worker, but you do need to be judicious on where your data is kept. Separate the data, keeping your non-work stuff where it’s convenient and your work stuff on a platform that doesn’t actively seek out adult content for deletion. Password protect anything potentially "suspicious" before sending it to the cloud for sharing, ideally on a friendly platform, using archival tools. There’s still a chance data can be deleted and accounts closed, but taking these precautions should help to keep you under the radar.
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