If I Can’t Trust You with my Photos, How Can I Trust You with My Sensitive Data?

Yes, I am paraphrasing Zoe Muth.

I’m a big believer in the cloud.  I also know a lot of folks- I’m talking way more than half the people I know- who dabble in the cloud, but don’t trust it fully.  If someone access your vacation photos, so what.  But if someone accesses your financial records, personal information, etc., that is a much bigger problem.

I tell people all the time that it’s OK.  Your information is safe, encrypted.  Hashed, salted and secure.

But stuff like this doesn’t help.  Let me be clear.  If this is what cloud computing looks like, no one is going to trust important data to the cloud.

Evernote says in a blog post:

The investigation has shown, however, that the individual(s) responsible were able to gain access to Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts and encrypted passwords

Headlines like this reinforce the phobias that lots of people already have about seeding the cloud with stuff that matters.  Hell, it makes me think twice (or thrice) about all the data I have in the cloud.  If Evernote can be breached.  If Dropbox is even partially vulnerable.  Then the whole cloud business, at least as it exists today, if flawed and probably dead.  Free space for photos and other non-sensitive stuff.  Sure, thanks.  But becoming a paying customer and going all in?  Nah, not so much.

I don’t know the answer.  Maybe there isn’t one.  But I know this.  If I am getting nervous about the cloud, so are 95% or so of the rest of the potential customer demographic.