What you don't know can hurt you.
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Evildave
02/06/2012 03:38 PM PST
Web based storage is 'indestructible' in all kinds of bad ways.
Like anything else on the interwebz, once it's put out there, good luck taking it back, EVER.
Especially if it's funny and embarrassing.
Even worse, if it's 'illegal', or later made illegal. Even though you uploaded it before it was illegal, if you can't delete it before the law goes into effect, you're in violation. And you can't ever truly delete things off someone else's server.
It can be permanent EVIDENCE against you. As a concrete example, if you're foolish enough to use something like Apple's 'We store your MP3s for you!' service. The cloud makes for perfect, huge pools of identifiable people to get a copyright lawsuit going against, and do you think Apple, or anyone else could stand in the way of that for long, given that their web site can be taken DOWN (iTunes, App Store, the back end for iPhones, everything), and put out of business for protecting their users' privacy?
So your identity backed up by a credit card, email, account, etc., MP3 files, e-books, movies that are obviously ripped or downloaded illegitimately (all kinds of ways to identify them), and what else does a copyright troll really need? Nothing, really, except a court order telling the 'cloud' provider to let them crawl their data and give you criminal pirate scumbags (who got a copy of some song from your sister) up on demand. And given the choice of seeing their own service, like 'iTunes' taken offline indefinitely, or giving YOU up, guess which Apple or Amazon or Google or anyone else with 'cloud' storage for 'your' media will choose?
As other examples, Facebook photos are NEVER deleted. Nor is any other FB content. Delete your account, they STILL keep it. Same with Google or anyone else. People even rip & repost youtube content no matter how many times it's removed. Same can be said for most such sites that host content. Gotta 'CYA' (cover yer ***) in case some user has kiddie porn or might be a 'terrorist'. Many countries require it, and they all have to build that in if they want to do business in those countries, too. Then they quietly slip a note about it into page 8000 of the modified EULA/privacy policy for you, too.
And of course, storing things on the cloud absolutely ignores the human element. Someone can be easily corrupted or blackmailed into coughing up copies of your data. If not just decide to make some cash on the side, on their own. If someone wants your data from the cloud badly enough, they will get it. So many incidents of 'super-hackers' could more easily be explained by someone on the inside propping the door open for their own, or an arranged 'attack' to grab credit and private info for resale. Even the company officers themselves, given 'hard times' and the expectation of executive income and stock options, and owning debt according to such income, who see the company about to go under, will invariably look for 'alternative' revenue based on screwing their customers, if only to prop the income up long enough to dump their shares.
So unless these little 'concerns' are properly addressed, the best policy is not to use the 'cloud' to store much of anything. Online backup services are definitely mega-ultra-stupid, because NOTHING will ever be deleted. One slip-up, and there's a permanent record of it that will probably exist for decades after you're dead.
Especially since you can get terabytes of local storage in hard drives that you personally, EXCLUSIVELY control access to, for WAY under $200, as a one-time expense.
Control your own data. Don't trust your data in the hands of strangers with their own agendas.