You create a document or take a photo and where do you put it?

Up until recently it sat on the hard drive on your computer and you may have shared it over a network or posted it on a website so that other could see it or possibly even modify it.

Now you can give it to some remote organization to look after and make available as you specify, to be kept secure or maybe it’s visible to others. That is until they have a some sort of accident or confusion that results in your documents being locked away or deleted or your access to their service being cut off.

If you have to share the information there may be some sense to putting it out on the internet. Maybe you have lots of photos or video that others look at and it chews up your paid-for bandwidth. If you are happy with the terms of service, that may say “not our problem but we can do what we like when we like with your data”, go for it.

I must be getting old because more often now these fancy new ideas come along and I don’t see the point, or often see it as someone wanting to profit from something that you could easily do for yourself. So you say that service is fantastic and free. Bull-Shit. They collect information, sell it and deliver to you lots of annoying targeted advertising. If there was not something in it for them, they wouldn’t do it.

So you upload all your photos and documents to a service provider that may store it anywhere in the world. Keep a copy on your own computer. When the data disappears or you get locked out, all is not lost; after all, that is why you bought that new computer with the 1000 gigabyte hard drive isn’t it?

I see a comment on-line today that Google has suspended a lot of new Google+ accounts for breaches of the TOS, in the process locking people out of their documents and email. How serious this is and how soon it gets sorted out, I don’t know, and really don’t care. It’s lucky you still have copies on your own computer.