I'm wondering... while they are storing all that data...do they keep their grubby little hands off or do they have their own little plan as to what to do with it?
Carbonite claims the following:
“Carbonite collects personal information relevant to Your subscription with Carbonite, including...certain non-personally identifiable information from Your computer that reflects Your use and configuration of Carbonite, including, without limitation, statistics relating to how often backups are started and completed, performance metrics and configuration settings. This information collected will be sent to Carbonite and may be used by Carbonite without restriction.
...
Carbonite gathers general information about visits to our website, the files You have marked for backup, the configuration of Your computer and Your computer’s interaction with Carbonite.”
So it isn’t immediately clear what they actually collect.
The only way to guarantee complete privacy is to purchase an external hard drive or NAS for your backups.
I am sure Carbonite has good intentions. However, the IRS probably has other ideas. What I do stays on my computer and simple back up.