How long is the reasonable amount of time before my data on Storj gets deleted?

Seeing from the Data Retention Policy page, it’s hard to know how long of the retention period that’s deemed reasonable.

I think it’s a good idea to specify the exact number of days for the retention period. So, the user can plan ahead.

I’m using Storj exclusively for my cloud backup, and my card acted up sometimes. So, I see this as a reliability factor. I don’t want my files to get swooped if I can’t pay for 7 days after the invoice, as I could be in a week or two of a travel trip with no internet access, for example.

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AFAIK it’s at least a month.

IMO, user shall plan ahead on not defaulting on the account. That’s where the bulk of planning shall occur, not around how long it takes storj to delete data after non-payment.

You can add multiple payment methods, including prepaid balance. Invoice that storj sends contains payment link, where you can pay immediately, or wait a week to be charged automatically.

This does not seem to be an issue.

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+1 on using tokens!

If your card isn’t reliable, you can switch to paying with Storj. Not only do you get a discount… you can prepay. You won’t miss an invoice if you maintain a positive balance.

A reasonable number of days for Storj to hold your files for free is zero, isn’t it? A safe assumption that makes it easy to plan ahead!

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Eh, I’ve seen many cases where a valid card was on file, but randomly failing. In one case I literally had to play chinese whispers between the bank and the supplier to help both sides fix an interoperability bug in their payment systems.

I can spend all the time planning ahead, but it’s still dependent on third parties.

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Still, even if I use Storj coin, the issue of buying the coin in the first place could’ve happened due to various factors, e.g. cryptocurrency’s policy of the government, the coin is forced to delist from the exchange, the payment gate is banned, etc.

Moreover, if I have a sudden surge on the usage, it would be impossible for the advanced planing regardless the use of the coin if I face with the above issues.

Therefore, without knowing how much time I have to sort things out, it’s like I’m betting my data’s safety here on Storj. If the answer is, “we will have your data deleted in 7 days”, then I’ll have a clear plan that’s moving my data out of here immediately while I still can. That’s what I called planning ahead. I wouldn’t plan out my risk factor on another risk factor.

Other than that, if the policy is based on the reasonable amount, it would be totally possible that some users might get their data deleted in 7 days, while some others have a year before that could happen to which might due to the sheer volume of their data on the network. This reasonable amount doesn’t seem to only lack clarity, but also transparency.

This is an example of why there should be the exact number. If the number is zero day, then my data would’ve been long gone on Storj. No, not only my data, I bet most people data would be gone. Just a hiccup on the payment system would be enough to doom everyone’s data.

You choose. If you rely on credit, or maintain a balance. If you get coins from being a SNO, or buying from an exchange, or from a DEX. If you store a fairly consistent amount of data, or if you surge in usage.

You choose.

Like if being late on payments is a concern… you could choose to prepay.

There’s nothing wrong with Storj retaining discretion on when to clean up delinquent accounts. With no fixed dates, if you’re worried about data loss, your safest decision is to act like it could be deleted immediately. And then make choices that make it less likely you miss a payment.

In my experience payment hiccups are rare: and they happen to every vendor. And that Storj keeps unpaid data around way too long. :wink:

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I mean, you’re suggesting a zero day retention period for paid users, while you’re OK (assuming since you’re still operating your node) with 25 days of free trial, right?

:laughing:

I would argue that is a bizarre logical conclusion here.

Mine is the opposite. Even if there’s nothing wrong on the Storj end, issues could arise on my end even when I carefully planned.

I suggested nothing for general paid users. Or free trails. I said if you are worried about data loss, your safest decision is to act like it could be deleted immediately… you could choose to prepay to avoid payment issues.

That’s all things you could do, independent of Storj, or their policies, or anyone else that uses them. To address concerns you have based on your experience with payment issues.

What do other paid/trial users do? I have no idea what their concerns are. I’m not their mom :wink:

We’re running in a circle here. I believe it’s clear enough that there could be accidental issues. Obviously, you can’t plan an accident. Therefore, having a sane amount of retention period acts like an insurance.

The issue is that we don’t know how much or the terms that the insurance covers. Would you buy an insurance like that? @Roxor :laughing:

If payment hiccups aren’t rare for you, you can certainly plan for them: if each occurance is accidental or not. One thing you could do is prepay. If it’s easier to think of spending that money in advance as insurance… I can see that. Great analogy!

Prepay is not covered accidental surge in usage + accidental issues of buying the prepay currency in the first place.

So, no, this not a solution.


Another great analogy from me:

Prepay is like the saved money in your bank account, let’s say for your car maintenance. But it’s not the same as insurance, of which the terms and the amount it covered is independent of the benificial’s circumstances.

So if your normal bill is say $5… and you maintain $50 in credits from Storj tokens… something like that (a 10x buffer) wouldn’t work? Have you ever accidentally surged a PB or something? :wink:

So, in order for my data to be safe on Storj, I would need 10x amount of the storage cost at all time??? So, using Storj doesn’t really save the cost as being advertised?

Seems the 90% less than AWS is before 10x hidden cost. Otherwise, your data would be at risk.

Your buffer is different than an actual insurance to which is independent of any circumstances, see my analogy above.


I wish Storj team could come and clear this thing up. I don’t feel like this is going anywhere.

No, you don’t need to prepay. You could: and you could choose a multiplier that makes you comfortable. The advertised $/TB doesn’t change: you’d still use it up at the ±$4/TB/m rate as normal. It seems like a way to take things into your own hands.

But I may have misunderstood what you’re suggesting. Let me try to recap.

Right now it’s at Storj’s discretion (what they consider ‘reasonable’) as to when they delete unpaid data. You’d prefer they chose an exact duration for the situations where:

  • When there’s a billing issue that’s not their fault (rare for most, but not for you)
  • AND the customer couldn’t top-up their account with tokens because of issues buying them, that’s not their fault
  • AND the customer maybe accidentally uploaded a lot more data than normal, that’s not their fault
  • AND the customer may not be able to address the billing issue in a timely manner, because they’re gone a week or two (for travel or something), that’s not their fault

If that’s not accurate, please correct me.

To me, Storj giving up deletion-discretion for events that are rare x rare x rare x rare… doesn’t sound like a good business decision. Especially since customers that are still worried about such events are given a 10% discount for any prepayment. Sounds like a good deal!

I apologize, I thought you were referring to prepayment as a pseudo insurance policy. If you want to buy actual insurance, yes you could absolutely do that instead.

Storj is pretty fast at responding to customer support tickets: I’m confident they’ll get to yours soon. Thanks for also posting in the forum.

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Reminder that you can completely prevent an accidental surge of usage fees by making use of the user defined limits, for example to cap how much egress you want to allow to happen in a given month. If you apply those user defined limits you will know ahead of time what the maximum possible usage charge could amount to.

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My point has never been about those what if scenarios. I am just pointing out in respond that those could’ve happened, as it’s not out of the realm of possibility. And it’s not to blame whether it’s Storj fault either, as I said that the issues could happen on my end accidentally.

Initially, I just want to know the exact number of the data retention period in case of the payment issues. It could be zero day, 7 days, a month, 3 months, a year. It wasn’t my concern. Even though a sane number would make me continue using the service, it’s not the point.

The point is I want to know the exact number of days to plan ahead and to evaluate whether I will continue using the service with data safety in mind. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough.

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And that’s exactly what they promise. Sane. They use another word — reasonable.

I’m afraid if they promised anything specific, like “we keep your data for at least 30 days past invoice due” — I, as a user, will be paying 30 days past due every invoice. Why would I pay earlier than necessary? And why would storj give everyone this free credit?

Yes. If you want absolute security then you shall setup trust, put $1M there, designate storj as beneficiary, pay the law firm to manage said trust, and thus ensure that your account remains active even in case of a massive sinkhole size of the city. Any extra insurance is expensive.

But if your data is so precious, instead of marginally improving one failure case — just backup to multiple providers.

Lastly, storj uses stripe. It’s a huge payment processor. If your credit card does not work reliably with stripe — change your bank. I’ve ditched bigger banks faster for much smaller offenses.

And finally, storj sends an invoice 7 days before due date. Receive it, and manually pay it. You have 7 days to fix issues (e.g. change banks because your transactions don’t post again).

No, seriously, ditch that card provider. There is absolutely no reason for any provider to fail next recurrent payments other than sheer incompetency.

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Again, not only sane or reasonable. I meant sane as to be exact in context. You’re cutting out my context here.

Sure, if getting your data wiped out is not your concern, you can put your invoice as close as possible to your last retention date. However, I believe most (if not all) S3 users would not want to risk with data loss. Otherwise, they would go with other cheaper/less business targeted alternatives.

Sure, if you put that amount in my account. Nonetheless, this is not a constructive solution. The probability of this happening is far less than all the what if scenarios so far. I consider this to be out of topic, bad faint, and rude.

Does this mean that Storj is not reliable after all?


For example, Backblaze B2 has a grace period of 30 days in case of payment failure, and another 2 weeks before the deletion. Again, I just want to know exactly this info. If Storj team could clear this up, it would be great. Again, it’s not my concern at all of how many days of the grace period will be on Storj. If it’s good, I stay. If it’s not, I move out. If the policy can’t be more clear due to whatever reason, I move out.

Basically, I have no issue whatsoever, just want to know, so I asked.

No more trolling, please.

No singe account is reliable enough. You can’t put all eggs in one basket.

That’s also the reason raid works. Two crappy drices provide much better data durability than a single best hard drive.

It seems that you is not reliable enough if that’s so hard for you to pay a couple month ahead for storing important data )

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