Also, I wonder if any tech geniuses could suggest a better way to store valuable data, e.g. priceless photographs and documents. I have had external drives suddenly become damaged and the data irretrievable, even by supposedly expert professionals. Any ideas?
“Also, I wonder if any tech geniuses could suggest a better way to store valuable data, e.g. priceless photographs and documents. I have had external drives suddenly become damaged and the data irretrievable, even by supposedly expert professionals. Any ideas?”
My family photos are on my PC with a backup drive.
Also stored on a USB drive.
Also on my phone.
Also on Google photos to share with family.
I think some family have downloaded them so that makes about seven locations.
Ehh... I hate to break it to you: it's not that simple.
If you have a smartphone of any kind, you have some sort of cloud presence. Android, iPhone, whatever, you must use that provider's app store which, in turn, requires an account, often your email, which is associated with a cloud account backed by some sort of storage, even if just a few dozen or hundred gigabytes. You could store absolutely nothing in that account for the duration of your ownership of that phone, but if the Feds, Interpol, MI6, CIA, NSA, whomever wanted to surreptitiously plant some kiddie p0rn or something incriminating therein, they could. You'd never know. Then you get a knock at your door, cuffs slapped on your wrist, and no jury will believe it wasn't yours.
If you have a public email provider such as Gmail, Hotmail, Live, Microsoft, Yahoo, even an email provided by your ISP, the same applies.
If you have a PC running Windows or a Mac connected to the Internet, the same applies.
If you have done anything transactional with an Internet-based provider in the last 25 - 30 years, there's a digital fingerprint of your activities that could be read, manipulated, and used against you. Unless you've been living under a rock since 1989, never had a bank account, never had a credit card, never had a mortgage, any loans, anything where your name, address, or relevant personal information was entered into a computerized system, then your existence could be manipulated by foreign and domestic enemies against you.
There needs to be a reckoning, folks. At some point our representatives need to take up a very complex, complicated, and honestly convoluted issue of digital privacy and pass one of the most sweeping and comprehensive pieces of digital privacy legislation in the world. It should start with this freaking insane concept of "opt out" for everything we do. We should not be forced to sign away our privacy to use a service. If businesses want to use us for marketing, advertising, and/or usage statistics, it should be an opt-in, pay-for-play system. There would be enough people interested in being compensated for their personal data that the companies wouldn't suffer financially while giving those of us who want to be left alone the peace of knowing we're not digital pawns.