Category: 
Online storage - cons and pros.
There is no doubt that Internet changed our lives once and for all. We are looking for information, pictures, news, music, video; we are going fun, shopping, dating, buying books, tickets, you name it. We have everything there. We do a lot there. We spend half of life there.
Then why do we still store gigabytes of info at our home PCs? HDD are not reliable enough (3-5 years lifetime?). What are you doing whith your personal data when you upgrade your PC or purchase a new one?
Why the heck not to put everything online and sleep tight?
I have 2 reasons for it, maybe some of you have more:
1. The performance - it is stil slower than local drive.
2. The trust - we beleive that the closer the safer.
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Yes, we are still thinking that burned DVD will save our data for promised 100 years! LOL
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No, we do not trust these guys at the server side. We do not beleive that they will take care about our data better than we do. But we do not… we do not take any care at all :)
Let us look at the online offering. There are 2 major types of online storage by purpose: sharing and offsite storage/backup (of course most of services offer a combination of both)Examples of sharing services:
rapidshare.de
depositefiles
Just google it and you get over half of million links…
The storage may be splitted to categories by purpose too:
1. general purpose - all types of files (services are ordered according to my personal prefferences):
http://xdrive.com/ (exelent for backup, 5Gb free, 50Gb for small fee)
To be continued if you’d like to know more (just leave a comment and we’ll discuss this issue)
2. media storage/sharing services:
Photo:
and many more
audio sharing (interesting category, since there is always a risk to get law suite from RIAA :) )
and much more
3. Online backup:
Not so much to say… Examples: https://mozy.com and https://prodcs.allmydata.com
Usually gives you an application which automatically backing up selected/all data in schedulled time
Aggregating service like http://bluestring.com which is not a stand alone service, but combines other services into one convenient media library (you can access all your media files stored on different services from nice modern interface)
4. One more category - online office like googleDocs - get your email, word processor, presentations, spreadsheets, etc. online. Create, edit, store, share - everything online. All you need is internet connection and browser (BTW: this post is written in googleDocs)
So why not to store online everything including important and confidential documents?
For me personally there is a huge concern about privacy. 99% of vendors claim that all data is “encrypted”. E.g. my favorite storage HUMYO claims the following:
“Relax as your files are shielded by 256-bit encryption, strict permissions and the physical security of a gold bullion vault.Humyo’s n+1 redundant secure server clusters protect and backup all your files so you don’t have to and nobody has access to your files unless you want them to.”
By the way, I can’t care less about the issue that staff will be able to view my files. My concern is different.
Here is an interesting story: Humyo offers nice sharing tool called “comunity”. You can invite people and share your files with them. One day I discovered that in my “Community” became fat. There were people that I never added or invited. They were there; I could see their files. ALL files!!! Including confidential corporate data (Yes! many users believe in claims and discovered that it is MUCH MORE convenient way to work together online than to send an attachment to 10 recipients on each change of document). I could see their files and they could watch my pictures. Why? How?
There are 2 reasons for such “strange” behavior. First one - a user mistake - there is a “risk” to make all/some files public and there is a chance that being unconciously drunk I added all these people to my community. They all should be also out of their minds to accept my invitation and to share their confidential information with me. Another possible reason, and I think that this one is closer to the truth - there is a bug in the system.
Actually it does not matter what caused so HUGE mistake. The result is obvious. I will NEVER put online ANY more or less confidential document in unencrypted format. Thanks Humyo.
But we are not over yet. There is another reason not to trust too much in such services.
Lates developments around Streamload/Mediamax/TheLinkUp clearly demonstrate the threat of blind trust.
It was a GREAT service since 1998 through early 2007, when it turned to be a complete disaster. Titanic efforts to regain credibility for few months and now:
You know what does it mean? The King is dead! MILLIONS of files are lost forever. And some of mine are gone as well. I enjoyed this service for years and I trusted them. During the transfer to “new” mediamax system my files were lost. I did not have a local copy… My fault! Nobody is in charge. No one will pay for it. By the way, did you ever read the license/service agreement before selecting “I agree”? The reading worth its time.
Please do not hesitate to leave your comments here.
