Is Dropbox/other cloud storage safe?

I've been using Dropbox for about 3 years but now since they check the file hash tags and prevent you from sharing copy righted material, I am thinking, is it really worth it to keep your stuff in the cloud or is it better to just rely on old school external HDD backups and get rid of all cloud crap?

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the company's official response they don't actually look at the contents of your folder, but rather just the hashtag.

But to answer your last question, it's really up to personal preference. The advantage of the cloud is "100%" safe data storage. An external hard drive can still get easily damaged or corrupted so the cloud is a safer storage option for those who really cant afford to lose their documents. There is also the added ease of access, since you can get to your cloud storage about anywhere without having to carry a unit on you.

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I see, i read the same thing about not actually seeing your files but just the hash tags...

 

For safe, use both, and to be sure it remain personal, encrypt the data...

 

SpiderOak encrypts all the data. but my concern is, if I format, how on earth will I access the data again?

 

Are you talking about portable drive or cloud DropBox??? your reply is at best confusing.....but as anything you send it to the cloud you should make sure it is encrypted so that program you have can only read it when you need to download it back to use the file/data again. One has to be smart about how one uses the Cloud-it's not going away anytime soon it is here to stay...Cloud and all its faults......

 

Well, it's not really 100% safe, as (among other possibilities) Dropbox could close shop in the near or far future (anytime, really) and if they do then you're screwed (if that was your sole backup).

Personally, I use TrueCrypt to store anything serious to the cloud, regardless of the provider, and I keep my passwords in KeePass (and multiple backups of that), so that could be a way to ensure that you'd be able to get your data back if your computer is wiped. Though I usually only store school work on my Dropbox, since I don't really trust them (or any other provider) with anything more sensitive than that, such as personal data or music, etc.

If you want to have more control over your data, I'd suggest DIY'ing your own cloud. I'm in the middle of doing that myself and will be dropping Dropbox shortly. Trying to speed it up considering what sort of people they're hiring these days...

 

My main means of "backup" is frequent upgrades to my hard disks. When I get a new larger disk I take the old one out and store it away as backup
I do have a lot of stuff in the "cloud" here and there.

I just keep some working files in Dropbox not like a full backup. CrashPlan and BackBlaze I think are the most popular full cloud backup solutions.
For Music a good free way is the Google Music service they hold up to 20,000 songs for you for free. Granted they will convert your FLAC and stuff to MP3 320 but if I lost my music collection (probably one of my most valuable things) I would be glad to have that rather than nothing, as a bonus I can stream off my phone when I am out without the ads from Pandora or Spotify.

I really like the idea of a home built high end NAS at first I was going to use Windows Home Server but have since changed my mind to build a box with FreeNAS. Toss 6 3TB drives in there and run ZFS Z2 RAID the equivalent of RAID 6 so I can lose up to two disks at one time without losing my data, but as the pros will say this is not a true "backup" as if something happened to destroy that server I still do not have a copy of the data anywhere.

So ultimately I may built two servers and have one at another site and have it do some data syncing, or perhaps just once in a while buy a big HDD and copy over what I feel is important and sent it off to a different location or a safety deposit box (Tape may also be a possibility). This is way cheaper than any cloud storage for the amount of data I have. But those two services I mentioned are the two that I know of that will backup UNLIMITED data for you for a low cost. I just do not trust that since I feel uploading 10+TB of data to them will only fly for so long before they are like... OK buddy lets be realistic here.

If you ever do go the route of your own server, I do recommend ZFS since it has built in data integrity checks. Standard arrays over time will corrupt your data especially on today's larger disk drives.

 

One thing to be said for Jarhead's truecrypt approach is that as long as the computer you access the data from has truecrypt, you can easily decrypt the data back. I'd still keep an non encrypted physical backup somewhere. Anyways, anything that lives on the cloud isn't entirely safe as you don't have control and physical access of the physical storage it's on. Personally, I'd avoid putting anything really sensitive in the cloud unless it's encrypted. I don't store things like my social insurance number and such in the cloud.

 

Everything I do is in the cloud now - every file, video, music, etc. Some of it is locally cached / synced for the purposes of speed, but the primary storage is all up in the cloud.

It is my cloud though, as in servers I own which are dotted around various datacenters.

Personally, I wouldn't trust Dropbox with my shopping list. But that's just me. OneDrive... maybe my shopping list*.

If I were a regular joe and didn't have a cloud infrastructure (in the 'actually something like Google/Microsoft/etc' sense) and I had to do some form of cloud storage/sync, I'd probably look towards options such as Owncloud + Dyn or Bittorrent Sync, and encrypted containers for backups of key stuff to public cloud services.


*In fact, I do

 

Depends on what you mean be "safe". As has been mentioned, it probably is not going to disappear on you unexpectedly, although there always is the chance, however slim, that DropBox could close down. There is a chance of network problems that would temporarily prevent you from accessing your data - even the big players like Adobe and Google have these occasionally. But at least in the near-term future, the chances of your data going away forever are pretty slim.

In terms of "safe" as in "safe from other people accessing it"... DropBox would not be near the top of my list. Several years ago, well before the NSA revelations, there was a somewhat big-time story about how for several hours, any DropBox account could be accessed without a password ( source). That was the point at which I decided DropBox was not a secure platform and quit using it (although I hadn't had any general backups or sensitive documents on it even before that). That they recently hired Condoleeza Rice, a supporter of warrantless surveillance, indicates that there's no reason to believe DropBox is any more trustworthy today than several years ago.

Encrypting before uploading to the cloud markedly increases the "safe from other people accessing it" metric. If that's too much of a hassle, you should make sure that the service you are using does not have a password recovery option. IIRC, SpiderOak is one of those that does not. The key thing there is that the data is encrypted, so if you forget the password, you lose the data. If the password can be reset, the data is unencrypted, so anyone with access to their servers (some employees, anyone in the world when their password system breaks like Dropbox's did, hackers who get into their system, government agencies they give access) can see all the data. Assuming the encryption SpiderOak uses does not have any backdoors, they are a secure storage option. There's a few others that do this, too - Mega.co.nz comes to mind. Whether you trust their encryption is up to you, but if so, they are superior options to the likes of DropBox.

I just use a hard drive backup, since it's relatively convenient, relatively safe (in both senses of the word), inexpensive, and relatively quick (with my current upload speeds, it would take about 138 days to make a complete backup via Internet uploading, versus about 10 hours for a complete backup from scratch on a hard drive). And if I were to do a backup even of just my documents, it would require encryption, since I know I have some sensitive data on tax returns and such.

 

That is the nature of the internet here one day gone the next day. Yahoo mail or Gmail could close the next day and they could sell everyone data off and what can they the users do nothing.

I advise against using it unless one has a safe place they keep the password so they can decrypt the data otherwise this will be a fruitless endeavor to get your data back. I also use KeePass one of the best free programs I found that work and a plus the keepass file you create you can encrypt it as well so to provide another level of security so only you with the password will see the logins. And I got multiple copies an one portable on my USB memory stick so I can access my data if I forget each of their sites and password.

I do that already my very own NAS at home. I got like 12-3tb of data from years of computer usage and videos so I don't really need a Cloud(Server Farm) to host my data that my laptops can connect to and get data from and store to.

 

Never said that OP couldn't use a flashdrive or other means of storage to have a backup of the container password. I'd think it's silly *not* to do so.

 

You be surprised how many forget to backup to USB until it is to late....but it does happen.

 

Yeah, it's sad though it really is something people need to do out of habit, even if you have to force yourself into it.

 

I also use KeePass, and recommend it. It does encrypt its database files, so re-encrypting them is not necessary. In KeePass 2 it uses AES encryption (and more with plugins); in KeePass 1 you also have the option of Twofish and one other algorithm which I don't remember right now.

 

I love sync services as Dropbox but I can keep safe only few data. Usually I need to keep safe a big amount of data, 200-300Gb or more. If I share my sync folder with a friend or one of my co workers and one of them delete a file, I have only 30 days to restore it, than I lost my file. I prefer use an online backup service as Memopal. If I delete a file on my computer, I can find it on Memopal. So I think that I can use Dropbox as a pen drive for few data and use Memopal to keep safe all my files.

 

I think you did more the sync with your co-workers your gave them write access thus they can delete your file. Maybe you need to go and recheck your sync and check your permission to see whom can delete and move your file. This is what it sounds like your doing.

A very good free program which I found by accident and I have it installed on my portable USB memory stick and I can plug into my computer and sync the data which makes it a very good program to have if you update on one database and sync to the other they become the same so update one and synce to the other file and all become updated. My file is also encrypted and password protected so unless one knows the password steal the database will become worthless to them.

 

I have ample storage on my home server, just the convenience of DropBox is great. If I could get a way to sync my files as easily as I do with Dropbox and my Android phone I would switch to my own box in a minute. I had a server backup to a server at my sister's house for redundancy but that machine died, I still have to root cause and replace, otherwise it would be an ideal situation.

 

There is OwnCloud, but I haven't tried it. ownCloud.org | Your Cloud, Your Data, Your Way!

 

If stored properly, I actually think an optical disc is still the safest way of preserving data; safe as in longevity and not randomly going poof.

When/If the Archival Disc is released, I may just buy one and store the most mission critical data on there for extra redundancy.

 

Optical disk? I can see for a large commercial use, but for individual use they are far too fragile and subject to corruption. Having two external hard drives stored in two different locations is more secure than any optical media, and significantly cheaper over time. I mean you can buy a 1TB USB hard drive for $60. I do this with my personal photos and videos. I have two hard drives, I leave one at my parents and when I visit I swap hard drives with updated photos. At least if my house burns to the ground or blows up my photos and images are fairly recent and intact.

That archival disk does look interesting though, just sounds like it will be a while if it ever sees any consumer level use, or you'll have to invest in expensive hardware to make use of it.

 

It's not going to see consumer use. Even someone like me who needs to keep data for years for regulatory compliance / client archival only needs tapes - and ~30 years hence, your average consumer is going to find the tech to retrieve data from current archival media hard to locate.

 

Tapes? You mean like magnetic tapes?