Techniques for administering commingled content items

摘要

Techniques for assisting owners to remotely administer their digital content items stored at non-owners' personal computing devices. The techniques involve identifying owned content items from among content items stored in a synchronization replica that is synchronized with synchronization replicas at the non-owners' personal computing devices. The techniques further involve allowing owners to remotely perform certain administrative actions on owned content items. For example, in response to a command initiated at an owner's personal computing device, a network signal or signals can be sent to a synchronization agent installed on the non-owners' personal computing devices to automatically remove all owned content items from the synchronization replicas at the non-owners' personal computing devices. For example, the generation and sending of such signal can be performed by an online content item storage and synchronization service that synchronizes a server-stored synchronization replica with the synchronization replicas at the non-owners' personal computing devices.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
applying ownership identification criteria to a plurality of content items that are stored in a first synchronization replica to automatically identify one or more of the plurality of content items that, according to the ownership identification criteria, are owned by a first user; wherein the first synchronization replica commingles the content items identified as owned by the first user with one or more content items of the plurality of content items that are not identified as owned by the first user; wherein a copy of one or more of the content items, identified as owned by the first user, is stored in a second synchronization replica at a personal computing device of a second user; wherein the second synchronization replica commingles the content items identified as owned by the first user with one or more content items of the plurality of content items that are not identified as owned by the first user; in response to a command, initiated by the first user, to delete, from the second synchronization replica, one or more of the content items identified as owned by the first user, instructing, over a data network, the personal computing device of the second user to delete, from the second synchronization replica, one or more of the content items identified as owned by the first user; receiving from the second user a claim of ownership to at least one content item of the one or more content items deleted from the second synchronization replica; receiving from the first user an approval of the second user's claim of ownership to the at least one content item; in response to receiving the approval from the first user, restoring the at least one content item to the second synchronization replica; and wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.