A few months ago, elav published an opinion article about the pros, and especially the cons of cloud storage. I recently confirmed his perspective without much pain.
Among other things, elav pointed out the What would happen to my data if that service suddenly disappeared in the same way as Megaupload?
Well, it's simple, you lose your data and anything else that you have stored in it and most likely without any possibility of recovering it.
Given this, I had thought that as long as I did not store in services that are used for purposes not so well seen by the NSA as was the case with Megaupload and recently hot fileMy files were safe from the clutches of the void and Obama, but as I just realized, I was wrong.
Megacloud, a cloud storage service that offered 16GB of free cloud storage, closed its servers without giving any kind of notice or warning, I never received an email, at no time was there even a tweet about this matter. It vanished leaving nothing but the taste of virtual uncertainty.
Investigating a little more in the matter, I discovered that it was not the only service of this type to disappear almost suddenly without any apparent reason that led to such fact.
Nirvanix, a cloud solution that I was contemplating for an editorial, educational and musical project in which I collaborate, closed its doors giving a notice to its clients of the closure, giving only two weeks to get their data.
And this was not a small or inexperienced company, but it served as a virtual platform for dozens of startups and dozens of other medium-sized companies that depended on its multiple and accessible services with no less than seven years of experience.
Even though only one of these two stories ended in the massive file loss tragedy, it leaves us cloud users as Copy with the terror of the sudden disappearance of our data stored in the cloud.
The solution
Even with a scenario as tragic as this, it is not all dark clouds in the sky. There are inexpensive, secure, and open cloud storage alternatives.
The centralized
They depend on a central server, which is automatically a weak point, but they have enough reputation to trust our data in these solutions:
Maybe of the last two you have to worry about the NSA, but when you have legitimacy over your files there is nothing to worry about.
The p2p and self-managed
Despite having fewer players in this category, they are the most reliable, since similar to torrenting, files are synchronized between personal or self-managed computers, instead of going through a server that you do not have access to first.
- bit torrent sync
- AeroFS
- ownCloud
- ftpbox
- sparkleshare
What do you think?
I'm more of the old school when it comes to backing up or storing. I have Dropbox because the smartphone came with 50 GB for 2 years. One is fond of taking photos in the field and more places, and for convenience I also have it in the rest. But data and relevant, not crazy! For that I have plenty of space on the hard drive and pendrives, at the moment it does not give me an external hard drive, it is what has a more or less domestic use.
Greetings.
I think the same as you. My data, my backups, all this ... I don't trust ANYONE other than myself to keep them safe, not even in a VPS of mine, that's how paranoid I am 🙂
The best thing is to have your data on your own server, so you avoid upset and that companies can tell you what you can or cannot do with your data.
Do you really have to trust Dropbox? http://www.elladodelmal.com/2013/12/lo-que-se-comparte-por-dropbox-al.html In the list, I have been missing Copy.
Well, I think I'm lucky that I don't have any critical data there. But your observation is very interesting. I will be aware that other services are so weak with your security.
Good your reflection.
I think that personally it would be to rent a VPS and create our own cloud with OwnCloud and the like.
Trust Dropbox? - Not crazy, I had bad experiences with my account, and as for the support after sending x amount of emails I consider it very bad.
SpiderOak promises and so does Wuala, but as technology advances we should advance with it. I think that the cloud gives many facilities when it comes to having our files safe and accessible anywhere, but as the Noctuido compact says above, creating several copies on our hard drives is not a bad idea and / or practical either.
Personally, I used Dropbox, after that, I sent an email to cancel my account, I went to Ubuntu One and then through references it is possible to get a lot of disk space but not even know what the canonical ones do with our data, an example of this is Stallman's accusation of Ubuntu of containing malware and spyware. Well, in the end I am just an average user who uses Ubuntu for facilities and PPAs.
Recommendation: Owncloud, Wuala and Bitcasa 😀
Regards!
In the UbuntuOne privacy policy, they have the clause that they, nor any other third party has permission or access to your files, and they will only be transferred to a court order. (NSA)
Since I own or license everything I store in the clouds, I am not concerned with those kinds of details.
Owncloud is still the jewel of cloud storage, its fault is still the lack of competitive prices on servers that offer you pre-installed owncloud.
I'm just using my SkyDrive for those things, and Mediafire with 4shared. For the rest of things, I have my 40 GB hard drive and I am setting up my own private cyberlocker with OwnCloud.
I use Google Drive, although I would love that it was on Linux (I would also love if someone did a port).
There is an unofficial adaptation, but it is far from the one that exists for Windows, which is official. At least when I tried it it was very basic, I don't know if they have improved it. http://xmodulo.com/2013/10/mount-google-drive-linux.html
My personal files unimportant there is something in dropbox very little, but what is really important at the moment on my disk waiting to mount my own file server.
So everything is secure without surprises.
regards
I use box.com because I can access it from nautilus or windows file explorer via webdav.
davs: //dav.box.com/dav
And if you open your account with an Android smartphone, LG gives you 50 GB of storage. Another advantage is that you can control folders from other accounts, so from a main account you can manage others.
The disadvantage is that in its free version the files cannot be larger than 250MB.
And of course the uncertainty of not knowing what happens and what will happen to your files.
In no case is it recommended that you lose control of your computing. That is why it is a dangerous practice to trust your data, especially if it is sensitive, to external servers. Today there are very powerful (and inexpensive) electronic means to store large amounts of data if you need to take it with you. It is preferable to use a memory such as the pendrive or micro sd, and synchronize it with the personal computer. Until now, it is the safest method of always having, anywhere, your files updated and capable of being modified anywhere. A very easy to use application for this is Unison.
For everything else, Tahoe-LAFS on I2P.
For very sensitive data, I think that free services such as Dropbox and Google drive are not adequate, in the case of wanting to have backups on servers in the cloud there is a good option to hire a server at Rackspace or Amazon.
Personally, I use Dropbox so that the photos I take with my iPhone go directly to my Linux, and Google Drive almost that I use it to keep my CV at hand in case an opportunity arises 🙂
regards
I think that services such as megacloud could not be expected much, if we look in google, it was not a massive service and much less popular, the possibilities that it would close were very high, in this aspect I think that you can only trust clouds such as dropbox, google drive , Amazon, huge companies with a verifiable infrastructure and trajectory, and not in services that we do not know if they were created by an enthusiast who does not pay the vps at the end of the month and they suspend it
I've always been curious about Linux, because no matter how beautiful they try to paint it, windows is more impersonal, boring and predictable every day (besides being doubtfully safe, at the network and security level, you just have to see and suffer the Viruses and Trojans that are paradoxically used by governments and cyber mafias and which have grown up under the protection or shadow of Microsoft-Cacasoft). Good and complete article. Long live Linux !!
The solution for everything is to have your own server and use owncloud, you can also have your own email