I have been getting a number of people sending me emails and commenting on the site asking what I think of Yunio. They seem to have a great offer of 1TB (yes 1024GB) of free storage that grows with time, sync, auto mobile backup, sharing, etc. They even got some great press from Forbes back in July that gave them some pretty nice exposure in the North American market.
There are some key things that people need to know and remember about Yunio though. First it is a cloud service based in China. With all the news of Edward Snowden and how people are becoming more distrustful of American based cloud services because of the NSA spying and tapping Internet backbones we all know China is doing it too. We all know it, after all they do have the Great Firewall of China and we should not be naive to think that the Chinese government is not doing the exact same thing as the Americans. If I have to choose between the Americans and the Chinese governments seeing my data I will choose the Americans.
Second, the terms of service are in Mandarin. People often don’t bother to read terms of service, but there is a difference between not reading them and not being able to read them. If you can read Mandarin and agree with the terms of service by all means go ahead and sign up but I would not recommend anyone sign up for a service that they cannot read the terms of service.
Third, if you want to sign up and cannot read the terms of service you can try running it through Google Translate. It might not give you a perfect translation but it does give you some insight into what you might be agreeing too. That being said, I find Section Eight part Six to be rather disturbing. I have mentioned this on another comment but I will post it here.
6 users should comply with relevant laws and regulations of the PRC (If you use the Service outside of the PRC, shall comply with the laws and regulations of the country or region). Users publish their digital works to ensure that there are no laws, regulations, policies illegal content PRC; absence of any breach of social customs, social ethics and morality and the general content of Internet etiquette; does not exist in any other inappropriate content. Special Tips, Users may not publish the following, otherwise the right to remove any of the foregoing cloud Connaught digital works and suspend or terminate all or part of your use of the Service:
The basic principles of the Constitution of the PRC as determined by 6.1 objection;
6.2 endanger national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity;
6.3 leaking state secrets, endanger national security or harm national honor and interests;
6.4 incite ethnic hatred or ethnic discrimination, undermining national unity or against ethnic customs and habits;
6.5 undermine national and religious policies or preach evil cults or superstition;
6.6 spread rumors, disturbs social order or undermines social stability;
6.7 spreading obscenity, gambling, violence or instigate crimes;
6.8 insult or slander others, or infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of others;
6.9 endanger public morality or national cultural tradition;
6.10 publish any unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or digital works morally objectionable;
6.11 harm minors in any way;
6.12 impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to cloud Connaught official, forum moderators, staff, or untruthful statements or misrepresent any person or organization department;
6.13 forgery cloud Connaught official website as well as any other users of the Service in order to deceive;
6.14 would infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any person (hereinafter referred to as the “Rights”) of digital works to be released;
6.15 digital works of any advertisement or any other form of solicitation digital works to be released;
6.16 will be designed to interrupt, destroy or limit any computer software or hardware or telecommunications work any digital device function software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs, to be published;
Disrupt the normal flow of 6.17 using malicious file sharing, publishing a lot of rubbish digital works into the public storage space;
6.18 unauthorized access to computer information network, or use the computer information network resources; without the permission of the computer information network functions to delete, modify or increase; without permission, to enter the computer information network, storage, processing or transmission of data and applications to delete, modify or increase; interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers and networks connected to the service lines, or disobey any requirements of networks connected to the Service, procedures, policies or regulations;
6.19 intentionally or unintentionally violate any law in force;
6.20 collect and store personal data of other users;
6.21 Other cloud Novo considered harmful or inappropriate behavior.
Now it states if you use the service outside of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) you should follow the laws of your country. That sounds great, except the laws of my country are very different from the laws of China and it would be very easy for me to upload an image and share it with others that in my country is lawful but in the People’s Republic of China is not lawful. I have used this example before, but I will say it again, what would Yunio do if I uploaded and started sharing information from 1989 of the protests in Tiananmen Square? There is just to many unknowns about using and sharing information and how you might get you and your account in trouble.
There are other cloud backup and storage websites praising Yunio, but there are simply to many unknowns about the company and the laws of China that make it impossible for me to recommend it to anyone. If you live in China obviously your choices for cloud backup and storage are limited and in that case Yunio is perhaps a great choice, but for people outside of China I think you need to approach Yunio with a very skeptical attitude. The short answer to is Yunio safe is, in my opinion, NO. There are to many unknowns about the service and the laws where they are located.
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