Google Photos and iCloud feel convenient—until you realise how much they cost in privacy, control, and never-ending fees. Here’s what their promo pages don’t mention.
Images are scraped to sharpen face recognition, location prediction and ad engines—permanently connected to your identity.
Algorithms scan faces, objects, even brand logos to build detailed ad profiles —ever wondered why baby-product ads appeared right after you shot ultrasound photos?
Your memories sit in data centres abroad, subject to mass-surveillance programs and subpoenas you’ll never hear about.
What starts at a few ringgit a month quickly becomes hundreds every year—and inflation never sleeps.
Clicking delete often just hides files from view—back-end replicas may linger for months (or longer).
Centralised clouds are trophy targets. One breach can leak billions of intimate photos, and you’re powerless to stop it.
Nothing leaves your network unless you share it.
No subscriptions. No upsells. No surprises.
Face & object search runs on the Mini-PC, not a server farm.
Delete a file and it disappears from all drives—no residual cloud replicas.
Start at 512 GB and grow to 100 TB simply by plugging in new drives.
Remote access uses zero-knowledge encryption and can be toggled off entirely.