[haertig]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I have very little truly sensitive data at all

There is a lot of stuff that was not considered sensitive in the past that is now sensitive.

Take for example - here in the USA - your Social Security Number. You wouldn't have that number in Estonia, but there could be some kind of "unique government number" that is assigned to you for some reason or another (retirement benefits or something else). Used to be, every place here asked for your Social Security Number and often times used it as the primary index into your data in their databases. Stores also required you to write it down on checks that you paid for merchandise with. But these days, this number is considered quite sensitive here in the USA. You wouldn't dream of writing it down on a check you were paying for merchandise with.

I don't have any sensitive data there. They can decrypt my ebooks, saved webpages, cat pictures and wallpaper collection to their heart's content.

With just the minute amount of information in your last sentence above, if I were a hacker trying to get into one of your bank accounts, I would narrow the type of passwords I would start guessing to ones that contained some reference or connection to cats. Especially pets that you may have had over your life. Probably books too. I would look at what specific eBooks you have and try and determine if you were into sci-fi, romance, biographies, etc. I would look at your wallpaper pictures and see if anything popped out there as being if special interest to you.

Now, you may be more like me and have passwords that look like kO2d&jeRq_b_]ay<F-SL, and your interest in cats would have no benefit in guessing that. But if you're like a lot of people, you might be realizing about now that having your cat's name in your password, even if slightly obscured, is not such a good idea. And it's amazing how lots of times someone could look at a picture of you holding your cat (one of your wallpaper pics possibly) and be able to guess the cat's name. Because that's the way you came up with a name for it in the first place, based on it's looks. e.g., a solid black cat might be named Midnight, Onyx, Cinder, etc.

e.g., We once had a dog named "Cuda". How did we come up with that name? Well, the dog was a Newfoundland, and Newfoudlands love water (they even have slightly webbed feet!) We were thinking of things having to do with water. "Barracuda" came to mind for some reason. Too long, so we shortened that to Cuda. Another dog we had was named "January". She was pure white. Like snow. Which happens here in January. Now a human might not be able to put these kind of thought processes into a viable plan to crack a password, but a computer making a million guesses per second certainly could.

My point being, the more "non-sensitive" information you reveal about yourself, the easier it becomes to guess the "sensitive stuff". If you are not totally random in your life (and who is?), then there are patterns and processes that exist and can be determined even from "non-sensitive" information. That's why cryptography always starts out with some kind of "random seed". If it's not random, then anyone trying to break that encryption has a much easier job. Same with your life events.

As to keeping my data at someone else's place, there's no one I visit often enough to keep it up to date.

I was talking about remote backup over the internet, not over the sneakernet.