3g2, mp4a, less/more features and what I do to keep your data safe
New audio formats
media.io now supports .3g2 and .mp4a files which means that you can now convert .3g2 to .mp3.
Less features
A while ago, I announced that I had fixed the “start over” feature that “never actually worked.” As it turns out, the new version didn’t work either and more than doubled error rates for a week.
As a consequence, I removed that feature entirely.
More features
You can now share media.io on StumbleUpon (again) and Facebook. Also, if you love media.io, please like media.io on Facebook. Thanks!
Privacy at media.io
Occasionally, I get comments like this one through the user survey:
The tool's privacy policy isn't very clear. I used it for files that aren't very sensitive, privacy wise, but I would surely hesitate for more personal stuff.
Let me explain why you can trust your files to media.io.
When you upload a file, it is stored only in memory (a RAM disk). Once your file has been converted, it is immediately deleted from memory. The file it is converted to will be deleted after one hour.
Throughout media.io, there is no place I store the names of the files you upload. Log files typically look like this:
2012-05-16 00:35:07,340 INFO MediaHttpSessionAttributeListener D438CC05A9317EC62EE8644F9E10CC95 destroyed, uploaded 2 files, 448663676 bytes, downloaded 2 files, 29064389 bytes 2012-05-16 00:35:07,340 INFO MediaHttpSessionAttributeListener D438CC05A9317EC62EE8644F9E10CC95 Y wav wav pcm mp3 44100 s16le 2 2012-05-16 00:35:07,340 INFO MediaHttpSessionAttributeListener D438CC05A9317EC62EE8644F9E10CC95 Y wav wav pcm mp3 44100 s16le 2
In this case, a visitor uploaded two WAV files (427 MB total) and successfully converted them to MP3 (27 MB total).
I store the quality settings that were used, but in way that makes it impossible to associate the settings to users. In other words, I cannot tell what quality settings were chosen by this user.
Notice the D438CC05A9317EC62EE8644F9E10CC95? That’s a so-called session ID. Since it’s unique to one visit by one user, it’s nearly impossible for an attacker to gain access to your files.
On disk, the original file name is replaced with something like 257225188875a7365e0df0c4c3df2be78c30a8be.mp3. This makes it impossible for me to see what files you are converting.
As for third-party services, I take privacy just as serious. Back when I was using ShareThis, I edited their widget code to prevent it from setting behavioural advertising third-party cookies. With Google Analytics, I set the cookie’s expiration date to 60 days (down from the default of two years). Also, I tell Google to anonymize your IP address prior to storage.
