Post: #1

I don't know if there is a thread on this but do any of you save your backups onto Dropbox? I have a system image of my entire machine saved to my portable Hard Drive but I wonder if it's a good idea to also save a copy to my Dropbox cloud for redundancy?

Thoughts?

Post: #2

Yeah. I save all my stuff to Dropbox. Not sure how secure it is but...

Post: #3

A guy in IT told me unless your data is saved on three different devices, it isn't backed up. That said, isn't DropBox "the cloud"? I don't upload sensitive stuff anywhere. Keep it encrypted and local.

Post: #4

Good question. I was wondering this very recently. I would like to have a cloud back-up to go with my portable hard drive backup (which I don't do too regularly).

Snowden has called dropbox "hostile to privacy":
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/20...-spideroak

Post: #5

You know. If people replaced "the cloud" with "someone else's hard drive" in conversations I bet there would be a lot less of this type of storage

Post: #6

Drop box is a no go.
Try Mega

The founder is in NZ fighting extradition to the US for running megauploada a few years ago.
He hates american gov't.

If you really want some secure and anonymous online storage got searching around the darkweb. There are plenty of options.

Post: #7

I'm doing automatic photo backup from my phone to DropBox - paying yearly for what used to be 100 GB storage, I think they just upgraded it to 1 TB.
I use it for assorted other things as well, although nothing I consider particularly sensitive.

Post: #8

Have you guys looked into spideroak? Supposedly a more secure version of Dropbox, though code is proprietary so can't trust them 100%.

Post: #9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_%2...y_concerns

Snowden mentioned Spideroak in an interview, seems interesting but will wait on it a bit more.

I have a Dropbox account for insensitive stuff, also paid a guy on Fiverr to expand the storage to 20+ GB.

Post: #10

I wrote a blog post about it a week ago. Saving sensitive stuff on iCloud, google drive or dropbox (which are all the same thing) is like storing your most valuable items in a safe in the middle of the woods, people have all the time in the world to crack it and they can do so anonymously. Keep anything sensitive on local hard drives.

Post: #11

An alternative is to encrypt files on your own end - eg. with TrueCrypt - and then upload.

I looked into Spideroak after reading the article, looks like their Android app is terrible, including syncing problems.

Post: #12

(09-09-2014 05:58 AM)Pantheon Dweller Wrote:  I wrote a blog post about it a week ago. Saving sensitive stuff on iCloud, google drive or dropbox (which are all the same thing) is like storing your most valuable items in a safe in the middle of the woods, people have all the time in the world to crack it and they can do so anonymously. Keep anything sensitive on local hard drives.

To play devil's advocate, you have billion dollar industries that save their backups (financial sensitive data), company ending data in the cloud so if they can rely on the cloud, what makes your own personal data more important than a huge bank?

Post: #13

(09-08-2014 04:53 PM)Moma Wrote:  I don't know if there is a thread on this but do any of you save your backups onto Dropbox? I have a system image of my entire machine saved to my portable Hard Drive but I wonder if it's a good idea to also save a copy to my Dropbox cloud for redundancy?

Thoughts?

DropBox has had a couple of major security leaks. Those that know would never trust it, just like any other cloud service really. Depends whether you are talking about your stuff is secure in the sense it will still be there next week, or secure as in people are reading it.


Condoleezza Rice was taken on to the board of directors. I shit you not!! So, kind of make your own mind up eh.

I have a drop box, but nothing on there is anything I don't already have backed up and couldn't afford to lose. And none of it is the really nasty shit that I want to keep hidden coz it would get me locked up (I don't have any of that anyway, but just saying). It is Gui's for computer programs. Patches for synths. I certainly wouldn't put a picture of my own cock on there (as lovely as it is), and not that I have ever done that anyway..

:-)

Post: #14

How large is your image file? You may be able to burn it to DVD or Blue-Ray, and as long as you take good care of the media and store it in a safe and secure location, it'll be accessible to you--only you--whenever you need it.

If you don't hold it, you don't own it--and if you don't own it, you don't control it.

Post: #15

I don't see a problem with uploading an image of your HDD to the cloud if it's fully encrypted. What's going to happen? Unless someone comes and beats the passphrase out of you, your data is safe. You're not a billionaire they want to blackmail or steal from, and nobody is going to even try to brute force your 256 bit Twofish encrypted HDD image, much less succeed.

It's a good idea to have an off-site backup, however you manage that. It could just be a HDD in a safe deposit box or a remote server you leave running at your parents' house. Keeping a HDD in a waterproof bag in a fire safe is good enough, really.

What if your house burns down or someone breaks in and steals your electronics? If your only backup was a HDD sitting on the desk next to your laptop, well, fuck.

I don't do anything really serious with my computers right now, so I'm not too worried. I like to keep a full HDD image so if my hard disk shits itself I can just swap in the new drive and keep going, but I've been lazy about that lately. In the future when I'm doing actual important shit on computers, like making my living, I'm going to have a fairly elaborate backup scheme in place.

Post: #16

My backup strategy is:

1. All my files and folders are on Dropbox. I use this more to sync files between my laptop, desktop, work computer (only certain shared folders), phone and ipad.

2. I have a time machine running on each of my computers for a local backup.

3. I use an online backup, Crashplan. This is a dedicated backup that is encrypted.

So basically I have 2 "cloud" backups and one local. For the most part, I'm fairly safe unless some insane event happens to multiple services AND my local backup.

All my photo albums (about 60k photos) are uploaded onto Flickr (I have a grandfathered pro account with unlimited storage).
Also, photos I take are automatically uploaded in my google plus account (not shared but just uploaded). That's just automatic.

Post: #17

Just an FYI to everyone using dropbox, they recently got hacked and millions of user account info is out on the internet.

Post: #18

(09-09-2014 06:11 AM)Moma Wrote:  To play devil's advocate, you have billion dollar industries that save their backups (financial sensitive data), company ending data in the cloud so if they can rely on the cloud, what makes your own personal data more important than a huge bank?

I know you're trying to make up an example to present a point, but in the real world: no they don't store those in "the cloud".

For your regular joe, Dropbox is not backup. Something is only considered backup if you can restore from it when shits go wrong.

For example, if you deleted or edited something accidentally last week and forgot about it until today, your changes would be synced to all Dropbox enabled devices and therefore you cannot restore from it.

Think about situations where you really need to restore something, and you can evaluate whether a service or device is good backup or not.