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Ask HN: What are the realistic privacy concerns of using a PaaS

3 points by afro88 ↗ HN
I've been looking at some PaaS offerings for my next app, and as it's main value is in the data it collects, I'm considering keeping the data on my own infrastructure.

So a quick question to those with more experience than me: is using something like Firebase going to hurt me down the line? I'm paranoid that if this thing goes well, Google would basically already have my data + a lot more resources and could simply leap frog wherever I'm at. Is this a genuine concern?

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smt88
I don't work at Google so I don't know, but a common way to prevent/identify data theft is to "watermark" your data.

You create false records that you can identify, but someone else looking at the data could not. Then, if you find these false records in someone else's product, you know that they stole your data.

A good watermark is: provably false in a court (couldn't just be a "mistake" or typo), identifiable by you in the future, and part of the public value of the data.

You should also keep detailed records of your process for creating the fake data. Type it out, print it, and mail it to yourself. Don't open the envelope. If you need to prove that you've been using this watermark for years, you'll have that document (with the postmarked date) as evidence.