Hackers Just Released A Tool That Could Threaten Everyone's iCloud Account

Business Insider ^ | 01/02/2015 | James Cook

[rlmorel]

Once you get the software tool set up and tested...it isn’t a problem at all...just repetitive. But is cheap and works great.

[zeugma]

Yup. A NAS is a good alternative, but the folks who can't (or won't) back up to a usb drive probably won't be able to set this up correctly either. Backups are important because it is inevitable that harddrives will eventually fail. However, that's not really the whole story. You also have to think a little bit about your data formats. The amount of data lost due to obsolete/proprietary file formats is really astounding. In the long term, for the vast majority of people, the data is really just going to be simply lost because your average joe out there isn't a computer professional who puts lots of thought into this stuff.

Taking care of your data has to be brain-dead simple. I think Apple does a really good job of that with Time Machine. Don't know if Time Machine works with a NAS. That's something I probably ought to look into, as both my wife and MIL have migrated to the Apple collective. I honestly do not know enough about OSX beyond UNIX stuff so I can't really help them out much with support. Kinda like it like that actually, but that will probably have to change eventually.

I figure the whole backup issue is one reason why people like the 'cloud' stuff because it makes it pretty automatic for some things. Personally, I wouldn't use cloud storage for anything that I truly care about because once you don't control your data, it's not really your data anymore.

[Morpheus2009]

What I don’t understand is that we have always had an offline option called an external hard drive, which when you consider the cost of buying your computer, isn’t that bad of a cost, you can back up what I have is 1 TB per external Hard Drive, and place that hard drive in a tinfoil lined box so that people cannot read it remotely, not plugged in by USB, and in a farraday cage, is just fine, and it’s hard to read that way.

[AppyPappy]

Which is why I don’t use “the cloud” except to share materials for church.

[Morpheus2009]

If you have a good password, good luck with trying to figure it out with a brute force assault. The Possible passwords are vast. You might as well find the key the old fashioned way at that rate, or torture the computer user for the key.

[rlmorel]

Right you are...