Consider what you just wrote, there ... you do not get to consciously choose whether or not some of your personal information appears on 'some server somewhere.'  Yeah, uploading your data yourself does ... but you could refuse to ever upload your data anywhere and still wind up with your private information on some server somewhere.  I continue to point this out to my mother, who refuses to buy anything online, even from amazon.com, because she feels that exposes her information in a way that buying something with a credit card at a brick and mortar store doesn't.  Grocery stores have been caught red-handed tracking customers in their stores, and any purchase with a credit card -- or just applying for a credit card, or even just receiving an application for one -- results in very vulnerable information being sent places out of your control.

Assigning full blame and penalty on users, then, is useless and, in some cases, flat out wrong.  In the same thread of store owners having a degree of responsibility for providing security on their premises for shoppers in their store and their employees by providing security lighting, etc., and property owners can and have been found negligent for not providing basic security measures resulting in murder, hijacking or theft, server owners / hosting providers / etc. should have a degree of responsibility for keeping private information secure.  A server owner who knowingly stores sensitive information, such as information that could be abused to steal someone's identity, should have a degree of responsibility if, due to their negligence in securing that data, hackers are able to access it.  As responsible as the hackers themselves?  No, but if they do not make a reasonable effort at encrypting the data and limiting access to it, I feel they can and should be held criminally liable for such negligence.

With the cost of HDD's being relatively low these days [like 3TB for $120] I can't understand why anyone would want to store private data on any cloud... then lose control/ownership of it.  There's no way on Earth I'd trust somebody like Google, Yahoo or Microsoft with my personal stuff, and not because I have something to hide, but more that I wouldn't want anyone laying claim to it, because it happened to be on one of their servers.

I dunno, the more I hear about this 'land of the free' the more I realise just how lucky I am not to live there, though it probably won't be too long before our idiot politicians follow suit and take away more of our freedoms.  Yup, you can always depend on a politician to throw a spanner n the works to make life less enjoyable

I have lost creative works (I'm an aspiring -- nice word for wannabe -- author) I wish I had stored online to retrieve from hard drives dying on me.  No, they don't need a lot of storage space, but its nice to have backups ... just as I like being able to format-nuke my hard drive when I need to and be able to retrieve software, like Stardock games, online instead of having to hunt around for my game CDs.

Some data I'd be more leery about, but I have friends who share private financial data with me via Google docs and whatnot.

Safe to say you can count on it.  Plan accordingly.

Back when I did a series on cloud storage, https://forums.wincustomize.com/423476 , I felt that Cloud storage wasn't a good move. Mark, I absolutely agree regarding HDD cost and security.

Also, I've written in the past about apps like word processors and office suites, etc. The entire move to personal computing was for control over your software and and hardware, and the convenience of the net.

I never intend to 'rent' software on some cloud app. Never.

NEVER store financial data like tax forms, etc. or anything with you Social Security number, etc. online. NEVER!

If the security is breached, your identity is as well. That kind of damage is unbelievable and trying to fix it will drive you insane. Please. Just never do it.

Well fair enough, there are a lot of things, personal data and so on, that you do have recorded somewhere, and you can't avoid that.  But you can choose not to use online storage for files and things, that's what I was getting at.  You can choose not to link your account to social networking and have your activities scrutinised.

There's no assurance of safety in filling out job applications and including your social security number, or anyplace else, either.  In fact, a huge portion of South Carolina residents recently had their private information, including Social Security numbers, hacked from state servers recently.  Not putting your info online yourself, then, is virtually ineffective at protecting your identity.

That's why you make regular backups... and have a backup of your backups on an entirely different drive.  For example, I have an internal drive for Acronis system images and personal data, then an external that's constantly plugged in to make a backup of that backup, and then another external drive I plug in once a week [sooner if there's something vitally important] to make a backup of that backup.  Yes, it takes a bit f effort to set it all up, but once you're set it's as easy as falling off a log.... and a lot safer than cloud storage, as we are now seeing.

Yeah, the bastards certainly know how to put a bitter sour taste in your mouth.  I mean, we have a constitution as well, but Paul Keating, when he was briefly Prime Minister, bought out an "Amendment Act", which can be used by government to change the constitution to suit its own agenda, without having to go to a referendum or the polls.

I just don't have the trust in cloud based storage after once reading about Google laying claim to data that was stored on its servers.  Nope, it's good old HDD storage for me.

Me either!  I use Painshop Pro, and recently I got an email from Corel inviting me to use its cloud based services, which I politely refused by deleting the message and not bothering to reply.  I mean, why would I need to use their cloud based software when I already have it installed on my PC from disc.  Apparently Adobe does the same thing, and people say it's a cheap way to use the creative suites, but I certainly won't be availing myself of it.  The way I see it, if I can't afford to purchase it on disc, then I'll have to do without.

I see you have idiot friends.....

Simple solution....keep out of the clouds.

Don't use it as a 'safe' backup for anything you may want to claim authorship of.  If you need to back up a manuscript...buy a USB stick....or 10.

Books don't need much space at all anyway....

I've been using webmail for over a decade now.  I want that data offloaded and backed up, but until I get DSL (supposedly still this month, will believe it when I see it) it's hard to even get the initial download done on Gmail at least.

Fortunately, my internets, they are a changin'

I hope.

Sigh.

(As far as other cloud storage, it's still good for pics and music and whatnot.  Just nothing private.)

These privacy issues are like whack-a-mole.  This cloud stuff should have the same protections as your private papers.  They should only be searchable via court order with cause.  

My brother has always said, "It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission."  My brother is an ***hole.  So are the people that made this decision to violate our trust.  

Anyone who thinks they have nothing to fear if they have nothing to hide are already lost.

If they can read then they will write and or delete.  Watch for a rash of politically motivated witch hunts.  

Say hello to your new jailer:

Darrell Issa

backs out of the room slowly...

 It's interesting reading people's comparison of the internet with actual physical things. Books, hard drives, media is not the internet. It does not even begin to be the same rules and the internet.  The internet within itself is pretty much a science project or theory. No, don't look at me that way. Then we get the hard drives, raid, back ups. Guess what, they are owned by someone else. The rules of whomever has physical control of the item wins is the rule that applies. It happened with my club a million years ago, it fits for my hard drive now. One cannot just decide that the hard drive that is in someone else's server has anything to do with what is mine. It doesn't. What I can use, touch, and carry around does.

It comes down to trust. My stuff is on a privately hosted resell account that I found is just as cheap as a regular service . He is an individual in the UK who rents a whole server that resides in Belgium. Dunno, perhaps a foreign server is more secure. Would renting a whole server be more safe? Get together with some friends and pay for it. Last I looked it was something like $250-$500 US per month. Ten folks together, $25-$50 each. Would that work? Rent a server? That brings perhaps the concept of "mine" back into play.

Meanwhile, we can't count on what travels trough the unknown paths and lives on someone else's machine as anything approaching "ours". My mind imagines in a court of law telling that a box full of photos in someone else's house is mine, and perhaps there are times I don't want to.

I know, I'm crazy. Sometimes my mind works in weird ways. I carry my most important backup on a thumb drive on my key ring. *shrug*

Lizmarr... make sure they're encoded, and that only you have the key.

1. Thumb drives can be stolen.
2. Many of the thumb drives I have bought have failed after two years or less.

Solution. If you have nothing in the cloud then there's nothing to steal. What's mine is mine and right here where only I can access it.