Lately it was a lot of comments about iCloud, Dropbox and similar cloud storage services. Since everyone is discussing who is offering bigger online storage for less money, I would like to ask experienced members for their opinion about privacy and security of these services.

Every service is telling us that our private stuff is safe and secured on their highly secured servers. Here are my doubts:

1. I will store stuff like office documents, family photos, presentations etc. -> Is there any chance that they, in any way, can delete my account (if yes, what are the reasons & do they monitor on my uploaded files - if they don't monitor, are we watching at new piracy target )

2. What if cloud storage service that I use in future gets to critical point like MegaUpload? Where all data no matter are they legal or illegal going in trash can - who gives me guarantee that I can recover my private & important business files (and I am talking about really important things not random music, photos etc).

I asked this because I find these services very useful for me, but I am still confused about things that I described above. I just dont want end up writing letters to authorities that my legal stuff is stuck on service that is under investigation for possible piracy content on some accounts

Personally I never put anything in the cloud that isn't stored somewhere else for example another computer or external HD. I use cloud storage as a useful extra drive for me to access anywhere but not as a be all/end all back up. My reasoning is not that I'm scared of what might happen to it in the cloud but more because I believe in having a strong back up regime.

I always ensure that I am backed up to multiple sources, why, well read all the horror stories all over the Internet of computers dying and years of personal photos, business files, personal stuff all just gone. I am definitely over the top with my back ups but at the same time I have piece of mind, everything I have is contained on at least three drives, my internal computer drives and two external hard drives (as a minimum).

So for me, the cloud is a scratch disk.

The Archangel

I back up independently anything I don't want to risk losing, and use cloud only for stuff that's not meant for my eyes only.