Am I the only one anti-cloud around here?

[LynneSin]

Look I like fancy technology as much as the next person but I'm still not buying this cloud technology. I'm not buying the ideal that somewhere out there in the world in space someplace I can store all my files and photos and music. First I read for many of these places I have to pay for the storage. Maybe I get a gig free but if I need more I have to pay so much per month or year or so.

Then I feel like anyone could just hop on my cloud and start looking at my stuff in there. Sure I know there is security to prevent this from happening but is there?

And finally if these places shut down their technology do I just lose all my stuff then what happens?

Give me a good terabyte hard drive backup system and I'm a happy camper

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. your post title reminded me of this!

I am not a fan of the cloud either

[Skittles]

2. no

it's as nutty as facebook to me

[Baitball Blogger]

3. I never had a use for the cloud. I didn't even understand its purpose until a week

before the nekkid piccie scandal went live. Unfortunately, that's when I updated to the cloud for the first time. Not that there's anything there that creates any worry.

What does bother me is that someone can access data from a cloud that is shared between two people. Especially when one of them is too trusting and gives someone their password. It has been known to happen.

[Make7]

4. I'm not anti-cloud...

[DavidG_WI]

5. You aren't alone

If your stuff is in the cloud you have zero control over it, the "cloud" is nothing more then a buzzword for a web server that some marketing rep came up with a few years ago as companies started seeing the value of mining their customers data. I've had more then one web host close up shop out of the blue with no more warning then a single email over the weekend that they'd be gone by Monday and I'd have to try and download all my data at the same time all of their other clients where as well. Luckily these were just site and forum data that I backed up nightly, so I'd only lose some forum posts and maybe a news article or 2.

Cloud services are based around the idea that your data belongs to the company, they reserve the right to mine that data, and now with the NSA's watchful eye every single cloud service has had to comply with handing over all of their data to the NSA or face losing their corporate charter and having their owners face prison time.

I'm very technically advanced, yet I absolutely reuse to use cloud based services and anti-social media or use any smartphone or trust anything using iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, etc. The only hand held internet enabled device I'd get is the OpenPandora or it's still in development successor the Pyra.

When you've been building your own computers since you started collecting junked ones at age 12, have been a mod of many web forums, been the admin of your own technical help forum, you tend to not follow companies blindly.

I was a Mac user, had "Helper" status on Apples forums and Mac users where a large part of the forum I admined during the height of the Steve Jobs reality distortion field, didn't fall for it and was ostracized for promoting OSx86 Hackintoshes after the move to Intel CPUs.

I'm currently a Linux user, yet I'm at odds with man there that have become Google apologists because Android pads the Linux numbers and Google occasionally does something good for the OSS community. Yet I seem to be of the only ones that see Google for what they are, n advertising company that sells glorified appliances that mark my words, if the internet infrastructure in the US gets good enough will bee completely cloud based so that Google can have total control and access to your data.

Notice how every single app on mobile devices requests access to far more personal data then it needs? Take the new Facebook app, posting to Facebook now requires the new app on both iOS and Android, but look at what it's terms of use are, it gets to take COMPLETE control over your hone, allowing Facebook to go so far as to use your phone's camera and microphone without notifying you, is allowed to make calls from your phone, have total access to all data seven on your phone, reroutes SMS messaging through Facebook instead of through the phone network like it's supposed to, etc.

Microsoft failures are my bread and butter, yet I hate them just the same.

My suggestion, if you need personal web hosting, get an internet connection with the fastest upload speed you can find, build yourself a little FreeNAS box and use OwnCloud or the like to save your data to your own server running off your home connection. Low end hardware sips power these days and the whole setup can be the size of a shoebox and put damn near anywhere in the house.

[WhiteAndNerdy]

6. No, I feel the same way. nt

[d_r]

7. I'd rather have my stuff on a hard drive

or disk.

It is nice to have a "cloud drive" where I can save a file from a computer at one place and open it on a computer at another place. But I like for that to be a drive where it is saving the file on both local drives and synching them.

[Fla Dem]

32. I don't save anything to my pc hard drive or to the cloud. Use an external hard drive

Last edited Thu Sep 11, 2014, 05:00 PM - Edit history (1)

which I disconnect when I'm not using it. I'm not talking about a thumb drive, but a 250 GB hard drive. I don't trust anything anymore.

[d_r]

34. don't blame you nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. You have good instincts.

Not too long ago, I read of a woman who somehow managed to piss off Amazon, and as a result had the books on her Kindle "disappeared"
and her account closed. It seems that e-readers are being seen by Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, as devices one only uses to "rent" books, since the account and e-book contents are stored on their cloud/server, under their control even months after you buy the book.
And now, thanks to the cloud, you can "loan" your e-books to someone else, for a ...2 week???...term.
More snooping.

I think I am the only person in town who does not have a cell phone, or a Facebook account.
Or a Windows machine.

I DO like having a Nook for portable reading, but keep the Wi-fi off 99% of the time, and keep my books backed up on a thumb drive.

[lululu]

29. Calibre

Re: "Not too long ago, I read of a woman who somehow managed to piss off Amazon, and as a result had the books on her Kindle "disappeared"
and her account closed. It seems that e-readers are being seen by Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, as devices one only uses to "rent" books, since the account and e-book contents are stored on their cloud/server, under their control even months after you buy the book."

I immediately convert my kindle books to Calibre, using the DRM strip off from Apprentice Alf. All free and very easy. I don't hand them off to anyone, so I am ethically fine with this. But they're my books, I paid for them, and Amazon can't come along and take them back when it feels like it.

You are also correct about this - close your amazon account, and your kindle books will disappear.

(I actually don't have a kindle, besides Calibre, I read my kindle books on my Nook.)

[KG]

9. thumb drives are dirt cheap. it's where my important stuff is

[femmocrat]

10. I zoned out of technology advances at Twitter.

That was my plateau.

[Xyzse]

11. A little different for me. It depends on Personal or Business use

Personal:
-Used only as backup files.
-I do encrypt some of them.

Business:
-It can work to host my server and run a website and all files. I've been pretty happy with Azure.
-Backup is the one, on site.

[orleans]

12. this is about the only thing i know about "the cloud"

it begins at 2:00

[bikebloke]

13. Sticking with hard copies

Remember before one of the wars (maybe after 9/11) radio stations wouldn't play certain music like John Lennon's Imagine. So what if they decided to censor inside the cloud. I'll keep my music on disques. And then there's the possibility of the cloud is taken down maliciously?

[whistler162]

14. Well .....

[Art_from_Ark]

23. It's clouds' illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all

[Gidney N Cloyd]

15. Not quite:

Last edited Wed Sep 10, 2014, 07:47 PM - Edit history (1)

[LiberalEsto]

16. I completely agree with you

Anything the corporations are pushing on consumers makes me extremely suspicious.

[Moondog]

17. Nope. "Cloud" =

Your stuff is stored on someone else's hardware.

What could happen?

[caraher]

18. One more here

I do keep some things on Dropbox but nothing I consider terribly important to me personally (mostly work-related documents that I consider as much my employer's property as my own)

[Nevada Blue]

19. nobody needs the cloud

as long as we remember to back everything up regularly on a second form of media.

I don't use tons of space, at this point in life the only thing I have on thumb drives are financials (taxes and things) and pictures pictures pictures.

A big believer in the keep it simple, stupid system here.

[GoCubsGo]

20. I'm not anti-cloud, but...

I sure as hell wouldn't rely on it as my sole back-up. Things like photos and data get burned onto CDs, and also stored on flash drives. And, no way would I put any financial stuff or personal information on it, because like you, I don't trust the security.

[DinahMoeHum]

21. For my personal use, no, I wouldn't trust cloud computing.

At work, I couldn't care less; it's the company's problem, not mine.

[DebJ]

22. I agree. Also, the "Constant Guard" thingy from Comcast drives me nuts.

Why in the world would I want to give some computer program that someone else controls a list of all my passwords?
I had called Comcast the first time this snakey thing began popping up on my computer and found out how to rid myself
of it's constant popup boxes, but then my 7 year old computer crashed a few weeks ago, and when the new one was set up, there was that darn thing invading my privacy, or attempting to do so, again. So I'll have to call again to rid myself of the pest.

Also, we got the upgrade to the new Comcast/Xfinity system recently, and the technician (actually four of them showed up!) told us that we didn't have to have our own Wifi anymore, that Comcast was providing Wifi for free. Okay, so that's not a secure Wifi. People have to be nuts to do that. I won't use my iPhone or iPad to check my bank accounts, either. And there is no way I'd ever want to use the technology that will allow you to pay for things by phone. Seems like a gigantic hack invitation to me!

Now, Comcast did send us an explanation that the point of the Wifi is that you can have friends who have Comcast sign on to use this second Wifi system while at your home, and not have to give them your passwords. I guess that's a good thing for people who use public Wifi. I don't, and I don't expect my friends to do so, either. Rather than give them our Wifi password, if I had a concern, I would simply type the password into their device myself. Usually you only have to do this once and their device will automatically hook into your system whenever they come back, with occasionally a need to do this again.

[hobbit709]

24. I trust no one or nothing else to keep my data secure.

Any files that really don't want anyone to see are on an encrypted hard drive on a computer that is NOT connected to the internet.

[mopinko]

25. not a fan. got my timemachine

but learning my lesson about backing up records.
my bank went under and all my records with it. fortunately, i had downloaded the stuff for taxes. that allowed me to fill out my divorce papers. otherwise, idda been screwn.

[Betty88]

26. My stuff can stay right here on earth

I worked in a data center I'll keep control of my stuff thank you. Also what if my cable company puts limits on my data for the month, what is it costing me to send my data up and down every time I need it. External drives pay for themselves in no time. Its like somewhere out there someone thinks I have an extra $9.99 every time I turn around.

[A Simple Game]

27. Get over it! The Cloud is the best thing to happen to you and to me.

With all of the information now stored in the Clouds, hackers will be less likely to bother with individual hard drives like yours and mine.

Got any naked pictures you would like to share?

[lululu]

28. a few thumb drives

and I'm good. The cloud is like leaving some belongings unattended at the local supermarket, where a fire is starting in the back room.

[MADem]

30. Not at all. Would you invite a stranger to hold your wallet or purse to keep it "safe" for you?

You are sensible.

[LynneSin]

33. Damnit, is that why that nice guy on the bus didn't give me...

my purse back

[MADem]

35. Whatit is!!! nt

[Wolf Frankula]

31. I back up my data

on an external hard drive, on thumb drives, on paper and on CD/DVDs, Extremely important data is kept in a fire proof safe. I do it for the following reasons: There is NO such thing as an uncrackable code or cipher. If a computer can think it up, another can crack it. and There is NO privacy in an electronic society, none. Everything is on the record, always. The illusion of privacy is given by the lack of processing time.

Wolf

[Blue_In_AK]

36. I don't care for it.

I back my pics up to external hard drives.