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

[chevybusa]

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.

 

 

Right on man!!! Thanks for the heads up...unfortunately I just checked the link and the Plus and Premeire are only for Windows....AAAARRRGGGHHHHH!!! Maybe that's why the the guy I talked to said 3 large for the "Business Class", that must be the only one for Mac...{censored}ing sucks!!!!!! This is the FIRST time in 8 years of being a Mac "fanboi" LOL that I actually regret having a Mac!!!!! LOL

[scarecrowbob]

MR - "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. "

What kind of case are you seeing where your domain name ceases lasting (in which email is still a viable mode of human correspondance)?

MH - "I just have gmail forward mails to another email acct. When I check that secondary account, I get my gmail too."

Yah, I am not a fan of gmail's interface in general, and check it via imap with mail.app or thunderbird (or for a long time it was outlook), and I have a lot of addresses that filter towards my gmail as well, just because I need the various addresses and I don't want to check them all or rework them every time I setup a different machine.

[MikeRivers]

 

MR - "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. " What kind of case are you seeing where your domain name ceases lasting (in which email is still a viable mode of human correspondance)?

 

 

I'm not sure I follow your question here, but someone suggested that the way to assure a permanent e-mail address is to have a personal domain name. That way people could send mail to me at janitor@mikerivers.com and it wouldn't matter if it went through Verizon or Cox or NetZero or AOL. It wouldn't have to be MikeRivers@verizon.net or mm1100@yahoo.com.

 

My friend Don who has the d-and-d.com domain and gives me an e-mail account there maintains all of his own hosts, mail servers, DNS servier, firewall, and so on (Unix of course) so all he needs is a pipeline. I'm not that smart.

[Bookumdano2]

The domain I have that's just my name has a simple contact page form with standard fields. Doesn't list an actual email or tell the public where it's going. In fact, that one doesn't go anywhere.

 

I just check it on the server a couple of times a day, since no one can ever seem to get me on the phone. I view all these contact forms that only show a name and "call me".

 

Hey, if the host is ever hacked, someone's gonna have a bazillion contact forms of mine that say "call me".

[BlueGreene]

Isn't the point of a backup to diversify your data storage? Nobody is going to get rid of their actual HDs but if it's affordable enough it could only really make your data safer, right? I mean.... people aren'y going to steal your music with the intent to sell it or anything...

[daklander]

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. Just don't use it for anything that there's a possibility of being used for spam. Of course, I'm using a gmail account for big chunks of my day-to-day life, so whadda I know

Of course you know Google is going to start mining gmail accounts for information to better fit their ads to the user?

[daklander]

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.

 

 

Heh, you'll have to contact Microsoft about that Mike. If you have one of the non Outlook addresses and that concerns you I'd send a mass mailing to let those people know. Then when they look for that last email from Mike Rivers that's the one that will show up.

[daklander]

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.

 

 

As I understand it, those old address will, over some unnamed period of time, no longer function. So, in some ways, Mike's concerns may be well founded. That would depend on the time frame for the total turn over.

[daklander]

 

.....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.

 

 

Yes, that's true Mike but if you are keeping the domain going it doesn't matter who the isp is. There are a number of very good free web site hosts that allow you to use your domain name so though the isp changes you'll still get the email. And, because those free sites are available, though limited in storage and band width, using them strictly for email would not normally blow up the bandwidth.

[daklander]

^^

[JeffLearman]

Some time ago, I did some work in computer security (network layer security protocols) and had to brush up on the subject in general in prep for that, since I was pitching solutions to potential clients in addition to doing implementation work.

 

The first thing about security is, you need to choose a level of security that's commensurate with the threat.

 

Think about that a moment. The reason this is important is that there is ALWAYS another step you can take to make something more secure (and still accessible). Each step up the security ladder has COST associated with it: both financial and complexity (and hassle). There is no perfect end-all solution.

 

For most of us, for most of our data, the simplest security can sufficient, since there's no incentive for people to work hard to thwart the measures: there's no payoff. For us amateurs, that would apply to most of our music files (we'd be honored if someone stole it!) And certainly it would apply to archiving our commercial CDs. When it comes to personal ID info and stuff that would help someone with identity theft or credit card fraud, more security is required, but a lot can be had by using simple schemes like PGP (or whatever built-in encryption you might have), and keeping your passwords in a "vault" like "Password Corral" and protecting the vault's password well (e.g., not using your kids' birthdays as the password, and not using that password for anything online).

 

The greater complexity usually involves key distribution, and it gets REAL complex with certificate authorities and proof that who you think sent you the keys actually did, etc. If you're the only one to access the data, you've dodged a huge bullet, and can simply use longer keys for data that needs more than the usual level of security. The usual level of security will protect your data for a decade or so against threats from typical hackers, but not from governments or international conglomerates. Want more than that decade or so? Double the key length; that extends it past 100 years (and probably more, but who knows how fast computers will be then, or whether someone will find a fast way to factor a huge number. Most experts think the latter won't ever happen.)

 

The bigger the economic or personal stake in the privacy, the more effort and expense you need. At the top of the security food chain is stuff like national security secrets. And oh by the way, don't let any Corporal have access to it all!

[JeffLearman]

Regarding reliability ...

 

I thought I had a fairly good system, albeit a simple one. Every couple years, I'd get an external HD that's 4 times the size of my last archive drive. I'd copy all the old archives over, and put the old archive drive in storage. The worst I could lose would be the last two years of archives. (It wasn't important stuff, just photos and hobby tracks.)

 

Until the day when I was managing some archives, and BOTH my last two archive drives failed. Since I'd never had a HD failure before, that was unexpected! Fortunately, I found recovery software that managed to pull most of the data off the latest one.

 

For reliability, the best bet is probably to do all the above: keep your own HD backup (and access it periodically, because backups aren't reliable unless you're routinely checking them) and backup in the cloud. Cover all the bases, for the best bet.

 

If you use the cloud for backing up your entire HD, you'd be wise to be careful to always keep any personal data encoded.

[MargeHowel]

 

If you use the cloud for backing up your entire HD, you'd be wise to be careful to always keep any personal data encoded.

 

 

I think you might mean encrypted. The data is going to be encoded into some format to carry the information.

[MargeHowel]

 

As I understand it, those old address will, over some unnamed period of time, no longer function.

 

 

hmmm, I heard just the opposite, that MS was going to preserve the addressing

 

 

So, in some ways, Mike's concerns may be well founded.

 

 

I think the fear that some people are going to have problems find him based on their model of just hitting reply is inevitable...not so much because of this transition, but because of the behavior of those users.

 

if they lose their account, or the reply to message or migrate over to more social-media messaging or other non-email ,etc etc they could lose contact.

 

contact points, like data, can really benefit from redundancy