Privacy

Just another example of how unsafe “the cloud” can be. What surprises me is how little companies care about security. I often ask cloud providers about their security measures and the typical answer is that they protect the connection to their servers with SSL which is “very secure”. This is probably enough to reassure a novice consumer that heard from his bank that SSL is the way to go to protect online transactions, but what about the data that is stored on the servers? Most don’t encrypt it unless required by law (credit card details).

There are so many stories nowadays about data theft by rogue employees or hackers, that I’m still amazed that people trust their most sensitive data with companies like Dropbox, Apple, Evernote, Google, Facebook, Sugarsync, etc., These guys have your password. They can look at all your most private documents or pictures unless you encrypt them before you send them. Sure, it’s so convenient to be able to have access to everything from everywhere, to share documents with your mates, etc., but just remember that it makes data thieves very happy as well.

Be safe online, provide a minimum of information, use email address aliases, encrypt your data, use services like Jungledisk or Wuala.