Do you trust cloud-based services?

Personally I don't, partly due to the lack of legal protections - not many countries have laws making cloud service providers responsible for any and all losses resulting from security breaches the way laws are in place making credit card issuers responsible for footing the bill if your card is lost or stolen, and partly due to the spate of high profile hacking incidents over the past year or two, but what about you?

 

I use SkyDrive for synchronization and ease of access but I make physical backups on my own as well. Best of both worlds

 

I trust certain cloud services. For example, I have no problem with Skydrive or Office 365. On the other hand, would I trust a "no name" cloud service? Maybe not. Would I completely trust a private cloud hosted by my company? 100%

 

still confused about why people make such a big deal about the cloud.

maybe I'm too young for this, but did people complain this much about email?

 

I have both Skydrive and Google Drive, but I don't use them much, to be honest I barely use them. I can't seem to find purpose for them.
Too bad I can't store my mp3s there and listen them on someone's else computer if my is not around. I don't suppose that is legal.

 

You can do that with Amazon cloud player, all you need is an Internet browser to stream your music

 

But will I have to buy music from them or pay for that service?

 

You can make it scan your current music folder and it will upload the songs to their servers, even music you bought with iTunes (if that's what you use).

The first 250 songs uploads are free, after that it's 250,000 songs for $25 a year.

PS I don't work for them

EDIT: And after that you can download any song at any time from their servers if you want, even to an iPhone by using the Amazon cloud player app

 

Just old school mp3 ripped from CDs here man .
That's actually kinda cool that Amazon service.

 

The amazon service is nice but you could do Google Music with 20,000 songs for free. No itunes drm support though.

 

I'm using SkyDrive because I can share certain files with other members of our Board Of Directors.

 

I have Dropbox to snyc school files between my laptop and desktop, but I don't put personal files on the cloud because I have no reason to trust that a cloud service provider will protect my data well.

Dropbox Security Breach: Who's Guarding Your Secrets In The Cloud? - Forbes

 

So-so, I wouldn't trust any of the cloud services with sensitive files without stuffing them inside something really secure, like a TrueCrypt container.

 

Sensitive files, no. Anything else, I use Dropbox.

 

Google docs for anything remedial that I don't want to have to keep updating on my android.

 

I don't think you're being specific enough. Do I trust cloud services? It depends on what we're talking about.

Are you talking about "data holding" cloud service from companies like Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Apple?

Are you talking about compute services offered by Google / Amazon? Other types of services? Are we talking about cloud services provided by a financial institution?

What specific expectations do you have of these companies?

If you are asking whether we should trust major cloud data providers to guarantee against all potential losses you may experience due to a worst case security breach, then I would say no (and that your expectations are outside of the scope of the service that they are providing).

I'd say that you can trust reputable cloud-service companies to provide the services they say that they provide.

 

The Internet is inherently unreliable, I don't trust cloud services by a long shot. I use them of course - Gmail and so on - but don't necessarily depend on them. Depending on them is where users get into trouble.

 

I agree. They are good for storing non-critical data.

 

Exactly. That is why I always download my emails using outlook and archive them to a separate data file to back them up. I've had AT&T/SBCglobal "lose" my entire inbox once.

 

For those of you who say you wouldn't trust cloud services with anything important, what about using Rackspace? Terarmark?

 

They are still cloud storage companies, and thus I wouldn't trust them with anything important. Not so much an issue with loosing files, but why should I hand over any personal information to some guys and girls far off in the distance? How would I know that they won't look into my data and abuse it? While the company itself might claim otherwise, individual workers have the potential to abuse cloud services.

 

I don't. I don't put any personal information on them. Only programs and data that I want access to from anywhere.

 

Dropbox for me, but my main backup is still an external drive.

can't be bothered to upload gigabytes of files and download them when needed when I can buy hard drives.

for important files, stored on my local tfs server lol.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

Depends on what we're talking about trusting them for.

I'm not inclined to use them as a general backup device for a couple reasons:
- If they were my only one, Murphy's law would dictate that they'd revoke the service right as my hard drive died. Might be OK to have them as a secondary backup.
- I wouldn't trust them with sensitive information. For example, I wouldn't want to put my password safe or my SSN on one. However, I'd have to spend a fair amount of time to make sure I didn't have any tax documents/etc. when uploading... right now they're amongst My Documents (which in itself isn't great in case someone steals my computer). My password safe (KeePass) I don't send over e-mail, either. I wouldn't trust LastPass in case they'd pull a DropBox.

However, for non-sensitive data that it's convenient to have access to anywhere, I'd consider them. At this point I don't travel enough to feel a need for that (I can put anything I'd be likely to need on my laptop's hard drive), but I'd consider it in the future. And also, I'd be more likely to if I had an Internet connection that would let me upload my data in less than 3 months. Even so, I'd be more likely to choose one such as SkyDrive where I'm familiar with the company behind it and they haven't been shown to be lax about security like DropBox.

I guess the thread title generically refers to cloud services, which means it does cover, for instance, GMail, which I use. Clearly there's a slight risk with GMail. But it's not worth setting up my own local e-mail server to send e-mail, either.

 

Agreed about email services. There is a way to encrypt GMail messages, though I don't use it since I only use my current email for school-related things (university runs a local Google Apps thing). At least if something goes horribly wrong, I can walk to the other side of campus to yell at the people responsible .

 

Hmm, kind of interesting. Reminds me of a school project I did where we made an encrypted AOL client. However, the major issue remains that the other person has to agree to it as well, or they get nonsense. And aside from perhaps one or two friends who'd be up for trying it for sake of trying it... I doubt I'd have a use case for it. Kind of nice not being wanted for anything.

 

That's a strawman to assume that only criminals want privacy. By that logic, unless you tell me all of the juicy details of your life then I have to assume that you've broken the law.

Anyway, there are several good reasons to want privacy, or protection of your data while transmitting it over the Internet. I certainly don't want anyone to find out my login for my bank, or email accounts. Most of the year, I'm about ~280 miles from my girlfriend, so it's important to stay in touch. However, I wouldn't want anyone else reading our emails or text messages (basically the only reason I still have a non-university email account anymore). And even if you are being convicted as a criminal, or are engaged in a civil case, I would imagine that you don't want your client-lawyer communications to be broadcasted over the Internet.