TRUSTING THE CLOUD CAN BE RISKY

From the Technically Good newsletter, on digital sovereignty.

“Reminder that “The Cloud” is “someone else’s computer,” and if that computer happens to be under the purveyance of someone who isn’t completely rational, that could be a problem. File under: Digital sovereignty. … especially since also, someone can, in fact, just turn off your cloud, leaving you without your data.

That link leads to “Over 170,000 Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?” over at Slate, and it’s tragic:

“The small nonprofits left behind are now visibly struggling. The childhood healthcare nonprofit operator I spoke to lost about 500 gigabytes of his firm’s data … The man who runs the disability services nonprofit wrote to me that it’ll take him and his mother “hundreds of hours” to fully re-create the instructional videos and documents that went poof.”

Leaving all your data to one company is a risk, no matter how big they are (Google Drive, Airtable), or how benevolent (like Proton). Local and off-site back ups are crucial, but unfortunately not everybody knows about these practices, or how to implement them (I’m doing two calls this week on breaking up with Google).

For one, download your email list often. You just never know when a service might shut down, or you get locked out!

Once you’ve got your cloud files on your own computer, back them up somewhere off-site (I use Backblaze, but pCloud and Jottacloud looks pretty good, too).

Off-site means your files are safe if your computer breaks, or your house burns down. Yes, these services are “someone else’s computer” still, which is why we seek the best solutions we can, rather than put our trust in the giant companies who grow too big to care.