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Ask Slashdot: With Whom Do You Entrust Your Long Term Data?

Posted by Soulskill on from the in-cloud-we-trust dept.

jppiiroinen writes: F-Secure, a company based in Finland, has sold its cloud storage business to a U.S. company (Synchronoss Technologies, Inc) speculated to have ties to the NSA. In previous, public announcements, they used arguments equivalent to, "trust us, your data will be safe." Now, it's likely F-Secure simply realized that competing against the big players, such as Google and Dropbox, didn't make much sense.

But it makes me wonder: Whom do you trust with your data? And who really owns it? What about in 3-6 years from now? How should I make sure that I retain access to today's data 20 years from now? Is storing things locally even a reasonable option for most people? I have a lot of floppies and old IDE disks from the 90s around here, but no means to access them, and some of the CDs and DVDs has gone bad as well.

8 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Same answer every time. by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Once you give your data to "the cloud" it ceases to be YOUR data.

    Now it belongs to whomever owns those servers.

    You want to keep it? Then keep it on your own hardware.

    1. Re:Same answer every time. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This should be the only answer and this thread should be immediately be marked as "closed"

      The person who asked the question doesn't understand how computing works.

    2. Re:Same answer every time. by everett · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Encrypt your own data, store it where ever and hope it's not valuable enough for someone to bother cracking it.

      --
      Sig withheld to protect the innocent.
    3. Re:Same answer every time. by geekmux · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "You want to keep it? Then keep it on your own hardware."

      Exactly.

      A.

      When every piece of marketing-subsidized hardware in the future looks and smells like today's whored-out smartphones, attempting to secure said hardware will be rather difficult, or impossible.

      Point is, you won't be able to ensure you "keep" your data anywhere, much like a smartphone today. Unless you're going to enjoy maintaining that offline system locked in a vault powered off 99% of the time. Doesn't smell very useful.

    4. Re:Same answer every time. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The person who asked the question doesn't understand how computing works.

      ... and the person that thinks there is only one answer probably doesn't understand how encryption works. You can put data in "the cloud" and still keep it private.

  2. Wrong question by crazyvas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wrong question, if it's asking for a storage company that you can trust your data with.

    Correct question: which open source encryption software would you trust to encrypt your data /before/ uploading it anywhere. You can upload whereever you want, and redundantly too. All you have to do is store locally is a private key. No different from storing a passport or home or auto title.

  3. Absolutely nobody ... by gstoddart · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But it makes me wonder: Whom do you trust with your data?

    Know who you can trust?

    You, and encryption you implemented ... absolutely nobody else. Period.

    And, really, if they break into whatever keeps your private key for your crypto, you can't even trust that.

    In an age where spy agencies have decreed they're allowed to do anything, and don't care about jurisdiction ... assume the world is full of malicious actors.

    Because it is.

    If you're an acquisition by a US company away from having your data be under their jurisdiction, assume they'll get into it even if that involves breaking your country's law.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  4. Long term storage: process is more important by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How should I make sure that I retain access to today's data 20 years from now?

    I still have my long-term MSDOS backups from 1991. The backup file is a whopping 13MB in size, and that includes the OS, a word processor, a C compiler and my source code.

    .
    I just made sure that I continually copied forward the backup files I wanted to retain. Each iteration of archival storage increased about ten-fold, so space wasn't a problem.

    I think it is more important to have a good archival process in place. To the OP, the error you made was leaving all the data you want on old floppies and IDE drives, etc.. You should have moved that data off to more current media as your processing moved to more current media.