Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
Privacy is valuable, but its violation is free. If you want plenty of free cloud storage, you’ll get zero privacy. Some companies offer a free demo so you can test the product before purchasing. The storage space is just big enough for testing, not for storing your entire video collection.
If you’re short on cash, consider building a home NAS out of second hand hardware.
See also: lemmy.world/c/selfhosted
I mean, you can safely use a free service if you upload only encrypted stuff.
That’s a good point! Didn’t think of that one.
If it's free, you're the product.
I'm running into the same issue as I move away from American companies. It's not a coincidence that better privacy laws, often mean less free stuff.
To be fair, on the modern internet, if it's paid, you're also the product.
That's one of the reasons I don't trust subscription services on principle without root access to their servers, you can not guarantee you're actually getting what you are paying them for once you are paying them for.
Isn't NextCloud supposed to be self-hosted?
In any case that's what I'd recommend: you can have server space for as little as €5/month.
If that's too much for you and you really need it to be completely free, then there's likely to be little Privacy. Try to avoid both US American companies and US American servers. The USA is not the only country to be avoided here though; to put it short, go EU.
I don't want completely free, just a freeumium thing, you know, like, I start it freely and then switch to a paid plan later.
Prolly the first time I have heard that somebody wants freemium.
If by "cloud service", you mean "cloud storage", I would recommend nextcloud. If you have your own hardware, it's free to use.
If you don't hwve our own hardware, you could check with the storage boxes at hetzner, which are managed nextcloud boxes and are cheap enough.
If you need hints on nextcloud, best is to provide a clear description on which issues you're facing.