Question concerning whether data inside tables are public available?

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Hi all. First of all: I recently discovered Baserow and I’m really impressed. I’m making a lot of spreadsheets in Google and Excel but seeing the possibilities of Baserow got me very excited. I am doing some testing now around creating a Home Inventory and started off with the template (awesome!).

I do have a question/concern around the accessibility of the data in the table. E.g. when I upload an image and copy the URL, I am able to view that image in an incognito browser (so not logged in/current session).

Would this mean that in theory all images/files you upload are public available? If so, that would defeat my use case as I don’t want my images (and maybe even receipts) to be public.

I also found this topic where Nicolas asked a similar question.

Is my assumption correct or is this some kind of setting or a Premium feature?

Thanks!

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Hi @Sinned, thank you for your kind words.

Files that are uploaded to Baserow will automatically receive a unique name that can’t be guessed. They’re also exposed publicly, but others will only be able to access it if they know the unique URL. This is because Baserow can be used with multiple file storage platforms (static, S3, etc). We want to stay as close as possible to being compatible with all of them.

If you’re self-hosting, and using S3, it’s optionally possible to use signed URLs. This can be configured using the AWS_DEFAULT_ACL environment variable out off the top of my head. We’re using Django stores under the hood, and all the configurable environment variables can be found here: Amazon S3 — django-storages 1.14.2 documentation.

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Thanks, Bram, for your extensive and clear answer. I understand the design decisions you made to provide maximum compatibility for multiple storage platforms.

With regards to the self hosting: It was an option until recently, haha. I decided to sell my Synology as I didn’t want to spend (too) much time on tinkering etc. Hence a (paid) subscription would be favorable. For the specific use case I mentioned in the opening, I think I need to figure out a different option.

However, this certainly does not mean I will stop using Baserow. :slight_smile: Thanks again!