Quote:
Originally Posted by Quexos
Yeah right I'm gonna trust some website with personal data. please tell me where I can send my address, credit card info, bank account info, voting preferences and so on, on some website run by people whose Identities or faces I ignore. And I take what ? their word that they will keep this private.
Big Brother is watching you guys, shame on it, but you willingly giving in to that, shame on you.
Edit: on the Dropbox website, it seems you have to download an application to your computer so that the info on your computer can be sent to the cloud. They call it an application, I call it a Trojan ...
|
That really depends on how you use it.
You can actually get a Dropbox account without downloading it. It is somewhat easier if you download it, because you have access to the folder when you're offline. But you don't have to. If you click "login" in the upper left, then "create an account," you don't have to download anything. You can just use it online only if you want.
I agree with putting personal data on there. If absolutely nothing else, Dropbox is still obligated, like any other site, to turn over your account to the gov if requested. And that's if
nothing else. They say they don't allow employs access to your files, but who knows whether that's true in practice.
That said, how good or bad a given service is partly depends on how you decide to use it. Cloud services exist because they are useful. If you use it in a naive way, well... that doesn't change the fact. I like useful things. I also like privacy. I can do both at the same time by being a smart internet user.
If you put your personal data on a cloud service and expect no one to ever look through it, or for it to not possibly bite you in the ass someday, you're naive. Not only do you run the risk of losing privacy, you also run the risk of losing your data.
But do I worry about someone seeing my articles, which are posted online, or my poli sci essay on agriculture, which I sent to my professor through the school website? No. I worry about it even less because I have offline backups as well. It makes my work and school life easier.
I'm not naive enough to put anything in my Dropbox that I would mind someone else seeing. In most cases, it's something they're
supposed to see. And what isn't is probably stuff no one cares about anyway - lecture notes and the like. Using it that way, the cloud is useful for me and poses no risk to my privacy.