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Cloud storage for data back up: Is is safe, secure, and a great option?


Ryst

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After the recent earthquake here (small but I felt it), I realized that my back up hard drives probably aren't gonna last of our place crumbles to the ground. So, I was thinking about cloud storage to backup all my data (music, photos, vids, docs, sessions...everything on my comp and external hard drives).

 

Does anyone else do this? Is it safe and secure? I'm concerned about privacy and if anyone else can have access. What are your thoughts/opinions/experiences?

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What earthquake? I didn't feel anything.

 

I have some files on the free dropbox and free Google skydrive (or whatever it's called) areas. Mostly just to see what it's like retreiving stuff. I rarely travel, so it's mostly an experiment for little bits of cloud backup. I'll probably set up a large cloud area with godaddy at some point for everything I have of importance.

 

I'll tell ya, I don't worry at all about security. No one knows where my stuff is in any meaningful way to get to it. I'm not sure that "hacking a cloud" can be done in the manner of "hacking a website". I may be wrong on that, but at this stage of the game, it's not a worry I particularly have. If I ever share files, I'd probably do that from a totally unrelated cloud service. I guess. Dunno. Not a factor for me at the moment.

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Personally, I do not believe that privacy is an issue as far as storing information online; I agree with Bookumdano.

 

Pragmatically, I think it is a big step up in reliability from storing things locally, with all the problems that come out of having to be a single person maintaining a file system and its hardware.

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Hey guys. This is something I'm also very much interested in, though know next to nothing about, despite all the research on it I've attempted...I called Carbonite and all it backs up is your hard drive, for anything more like external hard drives you have to get the "Business Carbonite" which is like {censored}ing $3,000 a year!!!!!!! For those of you that are using online backup, what is the best and cheapest way to back up all the files on my hard drive AND my external hard drives in this method? Any insight or info would be greatly appreciated, thanks so much!

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I've always trused "the cloud," even before it had that name, to store things like e-mail. But I feel much more comfortable about storing things on local physical media that I think I might actually want to access some time in the future than putting them in someone else's hands, where there are really no hands. I'm just old fashioned that way. I don't think I can necessarily do a better job of protecting storage media from damage than "the cloud" can, but at least I'll know where to find it. There are things that can be more destructive to data than earthquakes. Like lawsuits and the economy.

 

Suppose the company who maintained your file storage was suddenly to go out of business. Do you think they'd send all your data back to you? No, if you're lucky you'll have time to come and get it, and find another place to store it. I'm amazed that I've been able to keep a few e-mail addresses for as long as I have. I'm less concerned about losing some program or spread sheet than I am about losing an e-mail address or web URL that's been established for a long time. It's the only thing that keeps me hanging on to Verizon.

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Ask yourself:

Do you think a 'cloud' company would refuse to give all your files to the government if they were threatened with being put out of business?

Do you think they'll be in business for the rest of your life?

Do you think they are 110% completely immune from being hacked, from losing or corrupting your data, forever?

 

If the answer to all these is yes, then you should go for it.

 

I personally consider it foolish...

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Ask yourself:

Do you think a 'cloud' company would refuse to give all your files to the government if they were threatened with being put out of business?

Do you think they'll be in business for the rest of your life?

Do you think they are 110% completely immune from being hacked, from losing or corrupting your data, forever?

 

 

I had some reluctance about cloud storage a couple of years ago and probably lipped off about it here somewhere. Your points above are pretty much why I'm okay with cloud storage now... especially when free or cheapo like the godaddy plans.

 

1. Don't care if the government asks for all my files. I'd be flattered that they find any of my stuff interesting.

 

2. Dunno if Google, godaddy, dropbox, Microsoft will go out of business in my life.... or have their cloud biz for the rest of my life. It's not like I care if they all go up in smoke. The backups in the cloud are after all... only one set.

It's not like I don't still have the bazillions of hard drive/dvd/cd/flash/floppy disks around. (I might even do that idea of sending a set of physical media to my second cousin's brother's mom in Fargo to hide in an unknown location under the refrigerator.

 

3. If they're hacked and some of my stuff gets out into the world.... that would be the lotto for me! Courts are like atm machines in those scenarios.

 

I'm just way more relaxed about this stuff nowadays, unlike my super uptight former life in the previous century.

 

Clouds are cool ways to add extra storage that you can grab from anywhere you might be. And some extra peace of mind from the op earthquake scenario too.

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1. Don't care if the government asks for all my files. I'd be flattered that they find any of my stuff interesting.


3. If they're hacked and some of my stuff gets out into the world.... that would be the lotto for me! Courts are like atm machines in those scenarios.


 

 

I'll have to add these to my ever-growing list of Famous Last Words. Right after the one that goes, "If the IRS audits me, I'll be alright - I'll just tell them the truth - I've got nothing to hide" and "I'll just represent myself in court - the truth can't hurt me."

 

You can't really believe these ideas..:eek:

 

But I agree with scarecrowbob - pragmatically speaking, people typically don't back up, and if they do, they typically don't do so regularly. So a timed auto-backup done in the background would be a big improvement for most folks just in terms of having a backup at all.

 

The big databases by all accounts are very secure at the same time they are targets for sophisticated hackers. So we have a sort of escalation scenario where we huddle more and more people in larger bunkers, adding thickness to the walls while they keep building bigger guns, etc. Who knows where this will end. And the government - well, when there's a big enough threat (perceived or real, no diff) to national security, it's all theirs and they won't hesitate.

 

I know an older guy who was a bank database/operations big shot for decades, and he says that he'd like to start a new bank and put it all in the cloud. He knows his stuff, and claims that even medium-sized businesses and governmental entities have a hard time implementing data security on their own that can match the security of the big cloud-service providers. I can't say I'm any kind of expert in all this, but what he says jives with what I've seen in the business and governmental world.

 

I think I've said this before, but the most paranoid guy I know (that is fully functional as a normal member of the workforce) is a database programming whiz for Oracle, who builds the search engines for Google, et al. He will talk your arm off about "what's out there in the databases...someone is keeping everything in the databases and the power to tap the mega-data and analyze it is incredibly powerful and still just a fledgling technology....

 

Hide in the crowd/cloud - is that the way we really want things to be?

 

 

nat whilk ii

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I know an older guy who was a bank database/operations big shot for decades, and he says that he'd like to start a new bank and put it all in the cloud. He knows his stuff, and claims that even medium-sized businesses and governmental entities have a hard time implementing data security on their own that can match the security of the big cloud-service providers. I can't say I'm any kind of expert in all this, but what he says jives with what I've seen in the business and governmental world.

 

 

Indeed-- that is it in a nut shell.

 

I have setup my own servers on the amazon cloud and successfully gotten them to where they are serving rather complex websites, but there is no way that I'd prefer to DIY for my clients.

 

The margin of error is small and the threats are large and rather unknown.... and the resources of say, rackspace who hosts the main site I work on these days (as well as the IT guy who works fro the company contracted to actually implement and maintain the hosting) are far more secure than anything that I can come up with on my own.

 

Additionally, it is so much cheaper to get those resources than it has ever been.

 

I agree that the question of security and the fact that all this stuff is accruing into the clouds is a tough issue. Basically, all the time we all volunteer stuff on our social media streams that totalitarian regimes used to torture people for, ranging from the dates and time that we go place to the types of connections that we have with various groups of people-- if some Stalin-esque regime could gain power, then that would be a bad thing, as those social newtwork graphs are one of the methods by which people maintained such a grip over political dissent, and moving from note-card indexes "of who knows who" to facebook is a pretty large step.

 

The fact that we're all carrying devices that constantly broadcast our locations to out telco, alongside the fact that most of us don't brows through something like Tor makes the idea that someone could snoop my vacation pictures and gain anything interesting seem like we're missing the forest for the trees: online interaction even at its most basic, modern banking, and cellphone communications are all so radically insecure that the idea of storing my links and email on google seems like the least of my worries.

 

But I'm not worried about a totalitarian takeover of my local political area, so I tend to worry more about my hard drive crashing or spilling coffee all over my work computer than I worry about my data getting compromised.

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I'll have to add these to my ever-growing list of Famous Last Words. Right after the one that goes, "If the IRS audits me, I'll be alright - I'll just tell them the truth - I've got nothing to hide" and "I'll just represent myself in court - the truth can't hurt me."


You can't really believe these ideas..
:eek:

 

Yeah, I do believe those things.

 

I've dealt with the IRS dozens of times over the years, Sometimes they get more. Sometimes, they give me a break on things I didn't catch that were in my favor. It's not voodoo ...or them vs me. They're just a bunch of people trying to interpret a mindboggling set of codes ... like the rest of us.

 

And... I DO represent myself in court over the course of 60+ times as a plaintiff. And I'm not a lawyer. Or even a patent troll. My mother's lawyer says I've been in court more times than he has. It's not rocket science. Just a mindnumbing amount of paperwork and rules with hearings in there from time to time.

 

And it IS lotto time if a company gets hacked and my stuff goes out into the world.

 

Disassociating drama to things can make life a lot clearer and easier to handle. For me anyway.

 

Back to cloud storage I vote again that it's pretty cool in the short time I've begun to embrace it as a secondary storage/backup method. Even if one wants to cherry pick what to put up there, it's a really nice additional option.

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I called Carbonite and all it backs up is your hard drive, for anything more like external hard drives you have to get the "Business Carbonite" which is like {censored}ing $3,000 a year!!!!!!!

 

 

You must have been talking to the wrong person, or there is more then meets the eye here.

Check out their pricing at http://www.carbonite.com/en/home/online-backup-pricing

 

External drives are backed up with Carbonite Home Plus for $99 a year, and Home Premier for $149 a year. (With Home Premier, they well send you your data on a CD by courier. That would be faster than downloading if you had to recover everything). I'm sure the rates are even lower if you sign up for multiple years.

 

I use their basic Home system ($59 a year, but I got it for less by signing up for 3 years). I don't have a national secrets on computer that I'm worried about.

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Today's news: Hotmail is going away. Microsoft is phasing it out, to be replaced by a cloud-based version of Outlook.


So much for accounts that someone else manages lasting forever.

 

 

The Hotmail addresses will transfer over with no problems. Once you're logged in to Outlook it's easy to change the email address name to Outlook. Any email going to the old Hotmail, Live, MSN & etc addresses will end up in the Outlook email system.

I switched mine over and the Outlook email is much faster and cleaner.

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Any email going to the old Hotmail, Live, MSN & etc addresses will end up in the Outlook email system.

 

 

But for how long will that last? There are people who e-mail me once every few years. People like that aren't likely to keep up an e-mail address book and just reply to the last message they can find.

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But for how long will that last? There are people who e-mail me once every few years. People like that aren't likely to keep up an e-mail address book and just reply to the last message they can find.

 

 

I don't see any problem there. Changing the system serving the email addresses doesn't mean they can't use the old email addresses.

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I don't see any problem there. Changing the system serving the email addresses doesn't mean they can't use the old email addresses.

 

 

Yes, but will they? I knew a number of people 15 years ago or so whose mail provider changed their domain name and all their e-mail addresses changed with it. If you knew that Joe@Fleabag.com was now Joe@Bathandle.com, you were OK, but the Fleabag.com addresses were only good for, I think, 30 days before they all went into the bit bucket.

 

Maybe they're smarter now, or nicer, but if your e-mail address changes, your correspondents had better start using your new address.

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Maybe they're smarter now, or nicer, but if your e-mail address changes, your correspondents had better start using your new address.

 

Yes, that's true. However that's a provider issue that has been around for 25 years, not a cloud issue. And once again, that's the main concern with data service providers.

 

But it's a solved issue: I recommend buying a domain name and associating your email with that domain name.

 

Of course, I'm using a gmail account for big chunks of my day-to-day life, so whadda I know ;)

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Yes, but will they?

 

 

I think they already said they were

 

 

 

I knew a number of people 15 years ago or so whose mail provider changed their domain name and all their e-mail addresses changed with it. If you knew that
was now
, you were OK, but the Fleabag.com addresses were only good for, I think, 30 days before they all went into the bit bucket.

 

 

yeah, a lot of small providers, especially ISP providers had problems -- funny thing is, that's one of the reasons a lot of people got their "big name" accounts instead of their ISP based accounts.

The biggies like MS have a large enough user base, sufficient resources and interest (alienating users, competitors, etc) to make the transition.

 

There is the alternative of just not using email, that obviates the problem of address changes.

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But it's a solved issue: I recommend buying a domain name and associating your email with that domain name.


Of course, I'm using a gmail account for big chunks of my day-to-day life, so whadda I know
;)

 

:)

 

It doesn't have to be an either/or type thing. I'm not unusual in having a bunch of emails.

 

For instance, I really don't like the Android GMAIL app (thread view, at least last time I checked) so I just have gmail forward mails to another email acct. When I check that secondary account, I get my gmail too.

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if your e-mail address changes, your correspondents had better start using your new address.

 

 

I agree with having your name as your own domain and then a contact form tab there. Even in the form of a super-simple site. I have lots of domains, but my name domain works well for pretty much anyone I know.

 

People contact me that way all the time in instances where they can't find me via old email addresses etc.

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There is the alternative of just not using email, that obviates the problem of address changes.

 

 

Yeah, it seems that everyone wants to communicate via Facebook or Twitter these days. I don't have either and I'm feeling more and more left out. Meanwhile, Facebook is busy losing money.

 

 

I agree with having your name as your own domain and then a contact form tab there.

 

 

That used to be exotic, and it still costs money to maintain the domain name, and you never know how long that's going to last either. People can contact me via my web site, but it goes to my Yahoo e-mail address (which I suppose I could change easily enough if Yahoo drops mail). But many people who know me as mrivers@d-and-d.com don't know my web site, my Yahoo address, or my Verizon address. Lots can change over 30 years.

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