Mike Smothers of PC Made EZ’s article “Cloud backups are the way to go in saving important data” (AFN, Aug. 8) begged for my opposing view, that of a somewhat traditionalist tech gal, who just read a compelling article, “How Apple and Amazon security flaws Led to epic hacking” in Wired Magazine, http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/.
Free services like Google Docs or PhotoBucket make it easy to change passwords such that anyone could go in and change it to gain control of what was stored.
Any very important document should have two copies stored in two separate places. After all, the Declaration of Independence had 30 copies, each signed by the original Founding Father.
Hardware like high-capacity portable hard drives or thumb drives one can password protect in order to view what’s on are becoming cheaper all the time, virtually indestructible, never having to pay a cloud backup company anything per month.
Important documents can be stored on the above and simply locked in a fire-proof safe in one’s home or office.
With a sly grin I’m thinking someday a techno geek will find a way to get into all those cloud-stored docs and wipe ‘em all away, then people will say, “Darn, I shouldn’t have let those clouds (hang over) my stuff.”
Sandy Jane Wong
