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The Cloud: Convenient Until a Stranger Nukes Your Files
jfruh writes "Thanks to a plethora of cloud storage accounts, Dan Tynan thought his days of carrying a thumb drive around with him and worrying about email stripping out his attachments were over. But that was before he discovered that his Box.com account and all the files in it had vanished without a trace. With tech support coming up empty, Tynan had to put on his journalist hat to track down the bizarre sequence of events that ended with his account handed over to another user, who didn't ask for it and didn't even know who Tynan was."
Cloud services take all of your IT problems, and give them to someone else, period. A cloud is not inherently going to fix your problems, or make them worse, but just delegate them to someone who may or may not be able to handle them better.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
FTFA:
* Financial records. I scan all my paychecks and store them (on SkyDrive, not Box.com - fortunately). Our tax form PDFs are all on some cloud storage service, either SkyDrive or Dropbox, as are all our receipts. These would have been in the hands of a total stranger - perfect fodder for identity theft. And if the IRS suddenly decided to audit us? We'd be at their mercy.
* Health records. We scan all our doctors bills and insurance insurance statements and store them in the cloud. So now we're talking about medical identity theft for us and our kids - a situation that's much harder to resolve than standard financial ID theft.
What an idiot.
Unsure why people are moved to throw their data into the hands of someone (company) that would never treat their data sacred. I don't care what argument you put forth, no one is going to care (security wise) about your data as vigilant as you would (and should). Math wise, the cloud makes no sense to me, even on the free model.
1) wait for you to download your data over the Interwebs (mobile you say... tick tock)
2) There is NO GUARANTEE someone in the company isn't looking at your data or selling it. You're simply trusting they won't
Storage is dirt cheap. 2TB drives are like what 100-200 US per pop give or take. They're compact enough to throw in a messenger bag along with a laptop. Data availability is much faster than downloading it over the wire. Throw on crypto (say Truecrypt) and you have a decent amount of security. Only concern, is your HD goes bad. In either event, another backup 2TB is 100-200. Cloud pay for play? @ 10.00 per month, its STILL the cost if not more than buying your own device.
I can't remember where I first heard this, but the quote is along the lines of:
Whenever you hear a reference to "the cloud", replace it with "someone else's computer" and see how much sense it makes
Once you start doing that it shows you how little control you have over such services and how dependent you are on other parties, especially if you consider them as a panacea to not having to keep your own backups (as the OP seems to have done)
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
He keeps his work files, financial records, health records in the cloud.
Dear sirs and madams, i refrain from even commenting on that for fear of being downmodded hard, and rightly so.
Sounds like a local problem with your computer, and not some issue with the "cloud". What OS are you running?
Cloud storage can not be trusted both in terms of privacy and reliability. So follow these steps and you'll be fine:
1) Thou shalt not store unencrypted files in the cloud
2) Thou shalt have backups of files in the cloud
Does that reduce the convenience of the cloud? Yes. Because that is all that online cloud storage can offer - unreliable privacy invading storage.
I make sure to include the local Dropbox, Box.net and Skydrive folders in my PC's nightly backups. If you're going to be backing up your computer anyway (as you should be), it's almost no extra effort to include those folders as well.
For the "someone nuked all my files", this is why you should backup your files (or use a Cloud service with integrated backup/history or better use both).
Remember, a proper Backup uses MULTIPLE Backups and not all from the same service provider.
PS: for the "someone saw all by financial records", you should use an encrypted Cloud service where YOU own the encryption key and where the service provider can NOT help you should you ever lose that key.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
This is rather unfortunate for him, of course, particularly if he didn't have a backup anywhere else (duh!), but I'm sure we'll get a lot of slashdotters saying "See, this is why I'll never use the cloud!", and that's silly. Now, there are other valid reasons to avoid cloud storage (e.g. privacy and security, assuming you're not encrypting the data), but reliability really isn't one of them. Thumb drives die, get lost or get damaged, hard drives fail... there is no perfectly-reliable storage medium, but I'll posit that a good cloud storage provider has a much lower failure rate than anything you can manage yourself.
The solution, as always, is backups. Any one storage medium may fail, but the odds of several of them failing simultaneously is very low. Personally, my most important files live on a RAID-6 array with a hot spare on my home file server, and on my laptop's SSD, on my workstation's HD, and on Google Drive. There is a fair amount of low-priority stuff which lives only on Google Drive. It gets automatically synced to multiple machines, but that wouldn't help if someone else got access to my account and deleted my files (of course, I use two-factor auth). It's still better than what I'd do without a cloud service, which is that I'd have those files only on my laptop.
Hmm... It occurs to me that it'd be trivial to write a small script that uses rdiff-backup to copy the contents of my Drive folder to another folder, then run that in a cron job. Then I'd have automatic, persistent synchronization to multiple devices. I think I'll do that right now :-)
Bottom line: This is a sad story, but not a reason to avoid cloud storage. It is a reason to recommend backups. Especially completely automated, effortless backups.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yeah Steam is pretty good at running even if you nuke its registry entries (or reinstall Windows) and nuke everything except Steam.exe. It'll redownload all of its missing components and regenerate its registry stuff (though you need to relogin and auth with Steam Guard).
I did have a bit of a hiccup with Steam yesterday when most of their servers seemed to go down for a bit but it was only for like 15 minutes, then they were back up. Though my TF2 hats took a bit longer to come back.
Seems like a bit of an overreaction if you can just do a fresh OS install, fresh Steam install and get them all back. Have you tried doing a manual uninstall of Steam? They provide instructions right on their web site:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9609-OBMP-2526
Setting aside the issue of cloud storage, I'd like to point out that any file you don't back up is one you may lose. Leaving the only version on Box is as bad as leaving the only version on your hard drive.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
excuse me, are you from the past?
Play in offline mode? Oh wait, the Steam application seems to be broken only on your computer, but working for everyone else. Maybe this tells you that Steam is not the problem, you are. Learn to fix your computer. Reinstall Steam. Reinstall all your games (they will still be recognized by Steam - that's one of the good things, you can install/play on any computer, you can only use one machine at a time though). Play, like everyone else. No you'd rather whine like a little bitch.
Or worst case, install the Steam app on another computer, sign in, and download your non-DRM games to make a backup. You're not locked out.
As the old saying goes: there are two kinds of people. Those who keep backups, and those who have never lost data. I think this blogger has now moved from the second to the first category.
1) You are sharing a work account with your wife who has her own work universe. So when she is working on an article about the "ultimate cloud deletion tool" you will get dragged into her experience without knowing it.
2) you seem to (in theory) have no problem separating your work files from your professional files.
3) you let strangers (yes they are people you are working with but) access accounts that have files that you need for more than the moment. box.com should be no more than a ftp server for transferring files and you should see that the files are deleted after the other party gets them.
4) you don't seem to have any home backup system even though your livelihood seems to be dependent on the availability of that data, not to mention your personal data. dropbox should be the backup of the backup.
In short you trusted your files to a third party and they failed that trust. the lesson is....
p.s. please post a preview of your next article " my cloud provider sold my data to advertisers without my knowledge"
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
You should have Truecrypted. Doesn't keep people from hijacking your account but your files are of no use to them.
Pro Tip: Use a different password other than your login password for the encryption.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I'm the author of the post. You are completely and utterly wrong, and clearly ignorant about how Box.com works. I invited others to share some, but not all, of my box folders. I can actually control the level of access they have to each. I didn't give them my own login and passwords, they created their own. They didn't have access to my entire Box account, only the folders I chose. I could allow them to simply view files, or to edit and upload. So nobody had my password and login but me and Box. I did not violate anyone's TOS. And if I had not identified myself as a member of the press who was writing a story about this, it is highly unlikely I would have gotten any answers from Box at all. dt
What is the most disturbing part of this story is it seems that box.com doesn't have any major infrastructure for backup of users data. I would have thought that it would be as simple as pressing a button "undelete" for the box.com support people to restore last available data before deletion.
Two adages apply here.
1. Security is inversely proportional to convenience.
2. If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself.
So, lesson learned: Be your own cloud.
sig: sauer
Seems like a bit of an overreaction if you can just do a fresh OS install, fresh Steam install and get them all back. Have you tried doing a manual uninstall of Steam? They provide instructions right on their web site:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9609-OBMP-2526
Yes, I have. Everything else about the computer works fine, so why the hell should I reinstall my computer because their app stinks?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Cloud services are the spiritual succesor to the BOFH. All the power, none of the responsibility.
I have a malicious and friend delete proof dropbox. I simply have my linux server copy and sync the files. if they all disappear, they all reappear as the server puts them all back. The only way to delete them is to rename then with a special prefix, then the server will actually delete them.
IF you trust the cloud for security or reliability, then you are a fool. Always set up your own systems to automatically back up and manage on top of the cloud service.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I run BitTorrent Sync among several machines and keep backups with SpiderOak. Their zero-knowledge policy lets me sleep well at night.
Trolling is a art,
Yet another relevant xkcd: Reverse Identity Theft
What are you expecting them to do? Take remote control of your computer (I sure wouldn't allow that)? Or reproduce your exact problem in a lab on your end without knowing what's going wrong (probably impossible)? It could be an interaction with any other application on your system - not just the antivirus. If you've eliminated the app completely and thoroughly and reinstalling it doesn't work, then it has to be an issue with Windows or an issue with the combination of other software on your computer.
But it wouldn't be hard to get non-DRM games back. Install Windows on a second hard drive, install Steam, download DRM-free games and then go back to your old drive.
Don't get me wrong- I sure don't buy anything with DRM that I can't remove or use find a way to use perpetually.
why the hell should I reinstall my computer because their app stinks?
I won't say their program is perfect. But saying that all of your money spent on the games is unrecoverable just because you're not willing to try all of your options seems like a bit much.
Just out of curiosity, are you getting an error message?
One could work around these problems by encrypting the files on the local machine before storage to a remote machine. But what new blocking problems does this create?
I own a Synology NAS. It's great and includes plenty of useful features, including a dropbox/box-like application where one can sync files easily to any of their devices. No storage limit (other than the NAS and the storage of whatever devices I'm syncing to) and there's far more other things you can do besides the dropbox-like feature. Why should I pay a monthly fee to let someone else have all my important files, when I can easily host my own? It works great and I never have to worry about some provider getting hacked or changing their TOS.
Of course, one should back up their NAS (and there's plenty of easy ways to do so on the Synology), but the point is if people are concerned about their data, they should take responsibility for it.
Just because it is in the cloud doesn't mean you don't still need backups.
The simplest way to remember how to back up your images safely is to use the 3-2-1 rule.
3 copies of any important file (a primary and two backups)
2 different media types (such as hard drive and optical media), to protect against different types of hazards.
1 copy should be stored offsite (or at least offline).
A cloud service can count as a different media type and offsite, but it doesn't fit the bill for everything.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Cue the Nelson "Ha-Ha" picture here...
As a CISSP with 25+ years in the IT industry, I can wholeheartedly advise that anyone who stores their mission-critical data in anyone's "cloud" without local backup copies that are positively under your control, and a "Plan B" ready to access that backup data... then that person is a complete retard (and you should pronounce that as "REE-tard" for the proper level of dramatic emphasis).
Oh, and BTW... if you think your confidential data is secure from anyone else's eye while "encrypted in the cloud", you're doubly retarded.
However, it seems you're happier just to use it as an excuse to whine and bitch and have everybody feel sorry for the poor self-important baby.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Here's some real transparency for you.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I'd take a page from tech support people everywhere and just reinstall Windows/Linux.
I don't run Steam. But I can suck it up. If a game's not available as a stand-alone, I don't bother. The last game I bought? Torchlight 2.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
So long as your ADSL is not also on a strict monthly cap, you can run the upload over the course of several nights.
In the age of terabyte drives why turn your valuable data over to others?
Because you need someone to hold onto your terabyte drives in case of physical disaster. And because popular home ISPs tend to frown on using a home PC with a terabyte drive as a server.
As a backup. This guy was apparently using it as primary storage, and not backing up.
Best Slashdot Co
Hey now! You're being very unfair to encased geological samples!
Best Slashdot Co
Backup and replication (a form of DR == Disaster Recovery)
Good luck !
So maybe it is 3 :-)
New things are always on the horizon
What has always struck me about "The Cloud"; is that it is mostly wonderful marketing; "The Cloud". Now if you called it remote servers folk would have been a bit tentative, and maybe a bit more mindful of the potential problems. Convenient sure, but sh** happens, and for me, I tend to like to have only myself to blame when something goes wrong with my sh**. Do I use some remote server services (I get a bit creaped-out by sticking stuff in "The Cloud"); sure. But only there, seems to me I'm playing Russian Roulette with my info.
I think you're puttin a little too much stock in one's /. UID length
Offsite storage to ensure no data loss? Good idea. A bad idea is using online storage as it will be a matter of when (not if) they have a major failure, get hacked, go temporarily brain-dead, declare bankruptcy, or just suffer the boring disgruntled employee scenario. A better idea is rotating media to a meat space security deposit box in a bank. No you won't have the convenience of having your files at your fingertips, but neither will anyone else, ffs.
I've never had UID envy. Nor have I ever held it against anyone with with a longer, bigger UID than mine. I'd say my wife/girlfriend has never complained about my smaller UID, but this is Slashdot, and I'd be called out on that one.
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
The _local_ phone, gas, electric, company, my landlord, &c. are pretty much guaranteed to have a lawyer who is local and has standing w/ the local Bar, and have to take seriously, legal action at a local level.
National / multi-national companies w/o a physical presence in a community, don't have to care about being sued in some tiny little town they've never heard of and don't care about.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
"10 guys managing 1000 customers"
You more likely meant "10 guys managing 10,000 customers"
Or 100,000 customers with those 10 guys running a lot of scripts to
monitor for anomalies.
"10 guys managing 1000 customers" LOL
Where is the profit in that?
When you are using the cloud there are only 2 scenarios.
1 - you are a small and insignificant customer who will, at best, get a refund when there is a problem.
2 - you are a large customer and this effectively makes you a test subject
know which applies to you and plan accordingly if you are using "Da Cloud!".
Cheap storage VM.
Actually I suspect nothing is really deleted, just marked inaccessible to the owner but still available to the cloud company and any subpoena or court order.
Please encrypt your stuff yourself (not the cloud's encryption) before uploading.
You are trusting Box.com to implement good security measures, and the fact that they handed over your account to some total stranger doesn't give me a lot of faith. That's why you never put sensitive documents on cloud storage, you just don't know how good the people running the cloud are. Cloud storage is for stuff that you can afford to have stolen or lost.
I read the internet for the articles.
What I find interesting is that you appear not to have backed up the files elsewhere. While I appreciate the convenience cloud storage offers I also make sure all my files are backed up on some other media so if the cloud goes poof at least I don't lose anything. In your example, you were fortunate it was am administrative error and not box.com simply going out of business overnight. Had that happened, you might never get your files back or even worse someone would have a HD full of you data bought at a bankruptcy auction; which as a second point makes me wonder why you would store such sensitive information as pay checks / tax forms / etc. anywhere nut media you have physical control of to ensure it's security.
On a side note, it is interesting the difference in response you get when you say "I am writing an article..." vs "I need help..."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I make sure to include the local Dropbox, Box.net and Skydrive folders in my PC's nightly backups. If you're going to be backing up your computer anyway (as you should be), it's almost no extra effort to include those folders as well.
I haven't backed up my computer since Win 3.1, and have yet to have an instance where I thought "I needed a backup".
It will fix itself quite fast.
That is the first thing I tried. No, it doesnt. This makes me think the problem isn't just that the app isnt working.
It seems to only explode when it tries to make a network connection to download a game. The freshly installed steam will work great until I try to download or update something.
The thing that ticks me off is the program does not appear to log anything when it has problems, it just freezes up.
Maybe it will work better from inside a fresh VM, that way I could install the games to that, then copy the non-drm games out to the main install. (actually a lot of the indie-dev games might just work fine from inside a VM, its worth a try)
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Bitching about it on Slashdot has resulted in more suggestions on how to fix it than filing a ticket with their support team. (though this is not surprising to me)
It also garners flames from fanbois, but I am fine with that.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
That is the odd part, no error message, and nothing in the log files. The install elsewhere-and-backup technique is a good idea for the games; though it makes updating a massive hassle, at least it gets the thing playable.
Making backups of cloud-based software is probably a good idea anyhow. (As far as DRMed games go... well you get what you pay for.)
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Most people have stuff like pictures and documents that they prefer to survive a hard disk failure... if you don't, you're part of a very small group.
That sounds like a law you just made up.
Let's try it out:
Brad, if you have any employees, please fire one of them.
Am I going to jail for saying that?
I didn't get out of that article that he'd given away his login credentials, it sounded more like box.com just plain did the wrong thing.
The scary thing that I got out of that article was that with some simple social engineering seriously private documents (such as paycheck) information could be easily stolen from Dan.
There are things for which storing them in a shared storage system makes perfect sense, such as media. I've got piles of crap such as pictures I've taken on hikes out on my public dropbox folder.
However, if I were ever to get in the habit of storing information out on a shared storage system that could compromise my privacy, it would encrypted in a manner in which I'm the only holder of the keys and obfuscated such as being put into a drive crypt container/etc. Great, so you've just stolen a big pile of random bits... have fun with that.
Finally there is stuff that the only sensible place for it to be is in a safety deposit box. Some intersection of that would end up in my encrypted store, this is stuff like my children's original birth certificates, my marriage license, deeds to property, etc.
The big question you have to ask is, what are you guarding against? Having everything stored centrally makes great sense but now you've merely put your eggs in someone else unseen basket with the idea that they've got competent people working for them.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I agree with your premise that the person you responded to does not know how the service works. It is possible to share files with other customers without giving away personal data. I toyed with SecuriSync and it does similar sharing but requires that the recipient has an account in order to touch "shared" data.
With that out in the open, let me explain why on /. you will receive much venom. You don't have to listen, of course, but as a writer I think you understand the value in knowing your audience.
/. is not like other sites. There are numerous experts in numerous technical fields on this site. It's a stomping ground for an experts to provide opinions in their area of expertise without a "Company Slogan" involved. It also has subjects more political in nature where those same strong opinions abound. While there are a few kids, sock puppets, shills, etc... the majority of the audience here is intelligent. They notice spelling and grammar errors, they recognize common fallacies, and look for details beyond just the articles submitted. Submitters are inspected and critiqued right down to the ads on the page the article appears in. Slashdot is a unique environment, the audience is very detail oriented.
Your "about the author" makes claims that you probably intended as humor, but comes off as being egocentric or arrogant. On a site full of Computer Scientists who have been telling people of the dangers of "The Cloud" since the time it was called "Grid", the article and self description appear to be hypocritical and contradictory. If "Dan Tynan has been writing about Internet privacy for the last 3,247" was a true statement how could they not know about the dangers of "The Cloud"? Has Dan ignored the "experts" during his three thousand years of writing and only knows the corporate spin?
An omission of data is very important to the Slashdot crowd, at least as important as what you submit. Again, I mention that the crows is very detail oriented. You may be encrypting data, but that was not mentioned in the article. If you didn't mention it, it never happened.
I think the article itself backs the claim that experts have been giving for years. "Don't trust Cloud!". That said, the article poses no question as to whether or not that statement is correct. The article does not back the expert opinion in any way. The article appears to be a well articulated rant against box.com. Warranted or not, it's bound to receive lots of venomous comments from people on Slashdot.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Is the .exe even showing up in task manager? Does it stay running?
I'm the author of the post. You are completely and utterly wrong, and clearly ignorant about how Box.com works.
I invited others to share some, but not all, of my box folders. I can actually control the level of access they have to each. I didn't give them my own login and passwords, they created their own. They didn't have access to my entire Box account, only the folders I chose. I could allow them to simply view files, or to edit and upload.
So nobody had my password and login but me and Box. I did not violate anyone's TOS. And if I had not identified myself as a member of the press who was writing a story about this, it is highly unlikely I would have gotten any answers from Box at all.
dt
Dude, you are funny. You do know that storing stuff on the cloud isn't backing it up, right? That you can lose it at any time? Ya, Mr. I've written a book who's advice I don't follow.
Sure, the cloud is a convient way to access your stuff, but you can lose it at any time. Remember what happened to MegaUpload? Ya, all those legal files, poof!!!!!
So next time, don't be stupid, don't store your only copies of stuff in the cloud, keep a local backup, plus 2 "cloud" backups.
Thanks for the laugh.
Be seeing you...
"crows" = "crowd". Good grief... :/
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Valve's shitty application stopped working, and now I can't install or run any of the games I bought (read: rented) from them. Their techsupport is somewhere between non-existent and not-giving-a-shit. I am even locked out of the non-drm games (most of the ones I have bought), because I cannot download them without the stupid Steam application.
Lots of money flushed down the drain to a company that simply does not care. Never again.
What does your idiocy have to do with the cloud?
Be seeing you...
Dropbox
GDrive
Amazon
SkyDrive
Pitty they are all in USA, any that are NON usa based?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Sounds good! maybe you could post a link to this wonderful site?
I am writing this because you forgot to mention trolls.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
An intersting question is "What do you think money is, except a promise made by the state?"
AFAICT, that's ALL it is, and all it has ever been. (Croesus founded money by promising that the gold with his treasury stamp was pure gold.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I mentioned a few "troll" like types, and while they are present they are not the comments people normally see based on default settings (if you don't ignore -1 that's your problem). Did you miss "While there are a few kids, sock puppets, shills, etc..." or just mad that I did not specifically state the word "troll"?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You have not participated in the study on this site that measured comment quality and overall intelligence of the posts made, correlated with UIDs.
Once you hit the million mark, it's roughly a 40 point IQ drop.
*pats his site-wide disabled ads, reward for participating in the study*
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Dude, if you needed others to tell you to re-install we can probably see where the majority of the problem comes from. Either way, as long as it solves your problem, you're all good.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
??? How old ARE you? (OMG: I'm only 55 -- maybe I really am older and more paranoid than I thought.)
Let me get this straight: you gave away control of your unencrypted files to someone who wasn't a known personal friend and then am surprised that something happened to them??
I treat on-line services slightly differently: I keep local copies of EVERYTHING that goes out, and I'm surprised when it's still accessible online 5 minutes later, never mind 5 years later. And controlling exactly who has access to it? That's just a fantasy -- really. It's actually binary: either it's out there and they MIGHT have it, or it's not and they DON'T.
I do run Dropbox and use KeePass as a password manager. The credential store is encrypted, but even then the stored password there just isn't "quite right". Phone camera pics get uploaded to Dropbox. At times I'll AES encrypt and email or use Dropbox and expose. For stupid pics I'll just dump 'em out there straight. But I know what's exposed and encrypted-exposed. The latter die soon after they're used.
You store important and critical (tax receipts, lawyer-enforced) notices that might cause breach of contract? And you put control of that in someone else's hands, paid for or not? What kind of an IDIOT are you? Then again, you must not think much of the breaching penalties. That's great, I'm glad you're so confident at everyone always doing the right thing everywhere and nothing bad ever happening.
Me, if I'm going to have a some contract or data leakage it'll be because *I* did it myself and have no one else to blame. Then again, it's obvious digital computer files and paid services will stay around forever: Just ask MegaUpload, GeoCities, and LavaBit. Oh, and the data center located in the Twin Towers? Onsite backups sure came in handy there. Some got thru better than others: One, Two
Then again, there's this brand new data center that will hold all of your data for years -- all for free! I'm sure you can retrieve all of your data from that.
Really, I'm glad things are going so well for you, with the exception of a few bumps. And local storage doesn't solve everything either -- drives can be stolen, warrants can be served, computers can be hacked and data downloaded. But damn it, for 99.9% of my data, I'm 100% directly responsible for it. Offloading everything to the cloud is just offloading responsibility, never mind anything at all to do with the NSA.
Oh, one last thing. Even if all of the employees in the ISP, supporting companies, 3rd party vendors and everyone involved are all above reproach. are you sure? And even say all of the software is 100% vetted and accurate (ignoring accidental software bugs): oops.
Paranoid? Probably, but then again most things don't deserve multiple layers of defense. Only a few do, and of those only a select few get vetted, encrypted, backed up, and rotated offsite. But as for "What would you need if everything was suddenly gone (house fire) and you could only keep a couple of things?" Well there's your answer.
Good luck with it all; hope you produce a updated
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
"crows" = "crowd". Good grief... :/
Crows are also very detail oriented. I get them to help me with my tax returns.
If you want to own something, don't give it away. Big surprise. Meanwhile, the author proposes one solution, and labels it absurd: carry a usb thumb drive. Never mentions running their own cloud.
Roll you own. It's not difficult.
Pitty they are all in USA, any that are NON usa based?
Tarsnap, by Colin Percival (author of the scrypt algorithm).
It's based in Canada and, although the slices of data are stored on Amazon S3 (USA), the actual data-encryption and key handling is done on the opensource source client (which is audited a lot, thanks to a bug bounty by the author).
Specially, the kind of mismanagement that happened to TFA's Author is impossible with tarsnap.
Access and the various key which control who has access to what are controlled by the client. The admin (in this case: Colin Percival himself) can't do much without the keys which aren't available to him (they are stored client-side). The only thing which goes from/to the server are encrypted packets of data.
Tarsnap is a bit less userfriendly for quick-sharing of files (what TFA's Author uses specifically the box.com account).
But on the other hand, tarsnap is perfect for periodical backups/snapshots (with deduplication) of the critical folders with critical information (authors gives dropbox and skydrive as exemples of share where critical informations is backed-up: work documents, financial data, medical records, etc.). Those would have been much more problematic if control was given to the wrong person, as the author mentions (for example: financial data ending in wrong hands would be a treasure trove of data for identity stealing. And if this data get erased by mistake, the author would be on trouble in case of IRS audit).
But that's impossible with scheme where the control is done using crypto keys, instead of a status in a database somewhere.
(Tarsnap data can't be made accessible to someone else. In fact, it can't even be made again accessible to you if you lost the keys. No keys, no anything).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It depends on the service.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I think the only thing that political system of US empire eeee republic is still missing is hippodrome where parties using colors or some other easy to spot but otherwise meaningless attributes to mark their political allegiance (as was the case in Constantynopole at some point). Left and right is also useful of course but Hippodrome is missing. Next stage could be televized fights of naked members of each party in the ring. The winner getting to fuck anybody in the arse would be the third and final stage in this development. Oh wait we have that already...