So Who Does and Doesn't Use iCloud?

[Ed Rooney]

. . . or any of the other cloud sites. There have been a number of recent hacking scandals relating to cloud storage. Should we be giving the responsibility of our data storage to others? 

 

 

[M.Chapman]

Never used it and wouldn't trust it with anything confidential.

 

Seems that online password storage sites are now being targeted heavily by the hackers too, as these represent a real "gold mine" of info. So I wouldn't touch those either.

 

When you see how MS is still having to release security fixes for Windows 7 just show how vulnerable the OS that many rely on is. There are so many code "loopholes" it's ridiculous.

[Jill Morgan]

I have my own network cloud storage that I can access from anywhere. I do have a free box.com account, but just use it mostly for personal photos for sharing with family and friends. With cheap storage available, why would anyone need to pay for a cloud service then can have themselves?

 

Jill

[Allan Bell]

Don't trust cloud supplied by third parties and do not the idea of paying out fees.

 

Just use hard drives at home, it's all I need.

 

Allan

[Martin P Wilson]

Don't trust cloud supplied by third parties and do not the idea of paying out fees.

 

Just use hard drives at home, it's all I need.

 

Allan

Much the same for me. Online services can, and have been, withdrawn at effectively no notice; remember Digital Railroad? A lot of people lost their electronic archive. Also if you have a large and active collection it needs a huge upload bandwidth and you still need a local backup.

[Bryan]

Don't use it at present, but it may be cheaper long term than external drives. Will investigate when the time comes to upgrade.

[Martin P Wilson]

Oops

[John Mitchell]

Hard drives still work for me. I already have my head in the clouds. That's enough.

[Mike@Meonshore]

Yes I use cloud storage from Apple and Dropbox (for transfers to clients).

 

But I have no nude selfies stored on them (I have no nude selfies....)

 

I wouldn't put unencrypted personal information on them, but I'm happy to use them to move basic documents around and use Dropbox for image delivery for clients. I'm inclined to believe that the hacker was targeting celebs, and not just randomly hacking cloud storage.

[John Allison J]

I use Dropbox for transfer and non personal stuff and have moved sensitive data back to backed up hard drives.

It's difficult not  to use iCloud as a Mac user but just fro non-sensitive stuff and not for images.

[Gervais Montacute]

I don't trust the internet in general.

 

For moving large files, I use Fetch, which on the face of it, seems to be OK.

[Guest]

I try and avoid cloud-based anything - I do however use Dropbox for clients when sftp is problematic.

 

Used Carbonite for a while and it was a grand fail IME. I don't use icloud with my Apple stuff and now am being continually bugged to use JustCloud as a freebie from BlueHost, who host my website.

[spacecadet]

 

Used Carbonite for a while and it was a grand fail IME.

Yes, that stuff nearly killed Han Solo as well.

[Robert M Estall]

iCloud and anything else so-called cloud based is terribly misleading. These are not fluffy clouds, these are grubby (well maybe clean physically) warehouses full of servers and whopping big banks of hard drives. Are they as secure as my spare hard drives out in the barn and in my pal's bookshelf. I doubt it. And if or more probably when they go under or fail for some reason what are my chances of recovery? zerooooooo

[IanGibson]

This is an interesting discussion.  There is a lot of mistrust around putting private or valuable data on remote servers like iCloud or Dropbox, and that is understandable.  I only have documents and other data which has no real value to other people on these services.  But I am quite happy to put images I want to sell on Alamy's servers.  I have no idea how secure they are, or how Alamy would recover the data in case of server failure, and presumably we all attach some value to this data.

 

Obviously, my images on Alamy are backed up by me, on 2 separate hard drives (not including the one in use).  And i don't suppose anyone only keeps their whole collection in the cloud.

 

It's a bit like putting you valuables into storage.  You have no idea how safe they will be, but you don't know how safe they would be if stored at home.  Any building can be burgled or burnt down.

[Trevor Wintle]

I've got my whole PC backed up on Backblaze. ( auto backs up any changes at all times so if my PC dies a death, I can recover everything. Cost me just over £3/month. If my house burns down, I still have everything backed up. I also have all of my pictures backed up on an external HD. Yes, there is a risk of hacks, etc. just as there are when you throw out your rubbish in the bin, but I can't think of anything where there is never a risk. For my data, I'm giving the company a bit of faith. I'm sure it's in their interests to ensure they do their best for security for their customers,else it would be disastrous for their profits and image.

 

If you want to remain 100% safe, just don't go on the internet and unplug your Ethernet cable then no one can hack you. 

[Gruffydd]

The Cloud? With my broadband speed?

[Jill Morgan]

 

I have my own network cloud storage that I can access from anywhere. I do have a free box.com account, but just use it mostly for personal photos for sharing with family and friends. With cheap storage available, why would anyone need to pay for a cloud service then can have themselves?

 

Jill

Jill,what kind? DO you have the "Western Digital WD My Cloud Personal Cloud Storage"

 if so,do you like it?

 

L

 

 

Yes, I think that is it. I don't see the word personal here on my laptop for it, but I assume that is the same one. 3 TB. I am accessing it now from about 3 hours from home so I can show my brother-in-law some old family pics.

 

I love it. You can easily email files or whole folders to customers. I'll probably get a second one down the road as this one fills.

 

I've had it for about 2 years and never a problem.

 

Jill

[Dyn Llun]

I have around 400.000 negatives made over nearly sixty years of photography. They are very precious to me. Re prints of many of these, sold through the galleries that sell my work, (proper galleries, not online ones), together with my more recent, (not stock) work provide me with a very comfortable living. I would never ever contemplate storing those with some third party. Digital files should be treated in the same way. You have to take responsibility for them yourself. Do whatever it takes to keep them safe and secure. 

[MDM]

I have around 400.000 negatives made over nearly sixty years of photography. They are very precious to me. Re prints of many of these, sold through the galleries that sell my work, (proper galleries, not online ones), together with my more recent, (not stock) work provide me with a very comfortable living. I would never ever contemplate storing those with some third party. Digital files should be treated in the same way. You have to take responsibility for them yourself. Do whatever it takes to keep them safe and secure. 

Yes but you probably only have originals which could be easily destroyed by fire, theft, flood, deterioration etc, etc. Even if you have made copies of negs, they will never be as good as the originals.

 

With digital you can have multiple identical copies stored in various places so vastly reducing the risk of loss. However this does not reduce the risk of unauthorised access as against loss. Remote cloud storage is only one form of digital storage and may be prone to hacking and accessing of information, if no other precautions are taken (like heavy duty encryption). But files stored on hard drives or other media such as DVD could be equally vulnerable to unauthorised access if stolen. So if the information is sensitive, then heavy encryption is essential in additiion to multiple backups and even that does not guarantee unauthorised access won't occur but it probably inhibits it.