An analysis of someones digital life being wiped out.

[sandbender]

I now back up my photos once a month or after a particularly productive trip, onto a separate hard drive which is then removed.

But I must confess it's still kept in the same building as I have no easy options there.

Indeed, a hard drive might well survive a house fire, but maybe not. I usually back up my photos to DVD and store those at the in-laws place, far from perfect and it only happens every month or so.

I read that flickr will store an unlimited number of your photos in a non public gallery however unless you pay them they limit the amount you can upload each month.

Google will also provide non public galleries with unlimited free storage and no upload limits but they will automatically reduce the photograph dimensions to 2048 x 2048 pixels

Neither is perfect.

For shorter term backups I use dropbox, I can upload about 8GB of photos there and delete as I periodically back up my images to DVD or separate hard drive, the process is automatic as the 'import folder' for my camera sits within my dropbox folder.

I use Picasa to organise my photographs and that program has a facility that permits incremental backups to DVD, in other words I do not have to back up 100 GB of photos every month. Picasa will only back up any new (or edited) images that have been added. If it all goes pear shaped I can rebuild my library from all those previous discs.

 

[abominable_scouse_monster]

Thing is Sandbender if you read the T&C's for the free service you forgo your ownership rights to the image. Lots of the free services do this as they can then either sell your images or make some profit claim from them if they so desire (advertising etc). I hate to use the following buzzword but "The Cloud" is nothing but trouble from a data ownership and security point of view, lost of enterprise already use "The cloud" and lots of business managers are now using that term but it's on there own infrastructure that they own and that they control.

The free options are free for a reason, and as I said you can for the most part kiss your IP ownership goodbye to each an every file you send to one of them.

 

[sandbender]

"...Thing is Sandbender if you read the T&C's for the free service you forgo your ownership rights to the image..."

No you don't lose ownership of your images and files, that is a an urban myth.

However if you post an image to say your blogger account or a Picasa gallery then you have agreed to allow Google certain rights which they claim are 'only to help them promote their services'. Google will not 'sell your images or make some profit claim from them'. I understand that some folks might be worried about losing ownership of documents of photos they upload and maybe there are firms out there who might do that kind of thing, but google? they make their money harvesting data about what you (and practically everyone else) do and what interests you, that they flog and make piles of money from, they don't need your photos.

To quote google's TOS...

"Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours."

But they also say...

"...When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content..."

Which sounds much creepier, but this isn't about a multi billion dollar company nicking your family photos, its about you allowing them to access your files, back them up to their backup servers, to modify them (to create thumbnail images for instance) etc. etc.

However you are quite right to be worried about everyone and their aunt moving all their digital life into the cloud and relying wholly on the cloud to keep their stuff safe, which is why I thought the original post in this thread might be of interest to folks.

I'm not sure about flickr, I have an account with them but it doesn't get out much.

 

[abominable_scouse_monster]

In legal terms the second quote is giving up your IP without saying it, since Facefarce got away with it a few companies started doing it, nice little IP boost for them. They make any change to anything say change a pixel to a image / resize it that legal counts as a dirivitive work then they own the IP, about the only thing they wont touch because the massive PR mess it would cause is anything GLP licensed, but BSD licensed and a few other licences are fair game when it comes to source code and that is one thing I generate a lot of and only release what I need too and would like to keep Google at arms length.

When Google drive came out I thought interesting, read the T&C's then decided not to use it. They offer it to there business clients too with the same T&C's and most smart places say no to it right away.

 

[sandbender]

"...In legal terms the second quote is giving up your IP without saying it..."

No, really, it isn't.

Just to be clear, I don't work for Google and they don't pay me anything, although that would be nice, maybe they'd give me a new laptop.

 

[ebt.]

Thing is Sandbender if you read the T&C's for the free service you forgo your ownership rights to the image.

I'll say it again, Truecrypt. Just host the encrypted volume (drive) on dropbox, cloud, carrier pigeon whatever. Its free, open source, cross platform (mac, pc etc) and its military grade encryption. Whether you want to store bank details, or illicit smutty pictures of your shiny bushcrafting addiction, it'll do the job.

At the end of the day, If you want things to be secure, YOU need to manage the security.....not trust some huge faceless entity who may/may not manage security. Not sure if people follow this sorta stuff, but its a hangover from a previous life of mine. Even RSA got compromised recently, size/reputation is not an indication of reliability.

 

[sandbender]

"...I'll say it again, Truecrypt...

Thats my choice too.

"...YOU need to manage the security.....not trust some huge faceless entity who may/may not manage security...

Yep, in a nut shell.