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Anyone who uses computers or smartphones has certainly already used one or the other cloud service, all of which offer "cloud storage" and store your data on a server of the respective company. In addition, especially when it comes to larger companies, they offer an additional data comparison between the registered devices, whether computer, tablet or smartphone.
The best known are probably Apple with iCloud and Microsoft with OneDrive, but telephone companies such as Telekom or Vodafone now also offer these services.
That our own files and even the computer software we use are on company servers already has Bill Gates suggested decades ago. At least as far as the data is concerned, this has already been implemented - although probably only a minority does without this convenience.
However, the idea of the “cloud” did not come from him Bill Gates, because this idea is much older than many might assume. The ARPANET from the 1960s already used storage options on central servers and CompuServe offered such services from the 1980s. However, at that time this was still something for “nerds” who were probably also able to encrypt their own data on the foreign servers themselves.
Nowadays Microsoft, among others, offers that you have your own data safe on OneDrive. Other companies advertise with end-to-end encryption and other companies, especially in Europe, with the fact that their servers are at home in Europe - which, however, plays no role at all for data security.
Starting from us citizens, and not from research-intensive companies or authorities with access to personal data, this "problem" can be approached in a somewhat more relaxed manner. Here would be my recommendation
- to renounce the, mostly very cheap, offers from companies from the totalitarian world,
- to resort to those of renowned companies and
- not to store data in the cloud, the publication of which could harm oneself.
With the latter, I recommend not to save this data on devices that are connected to the Internet.
For my part, I've been using my own servers right from the start, which have been hosted very reliably by 1&1 - IONOS for a long time. And another one that a friend is waiting for me.
And out of sheer convenience, I also use a small server at home, which serves me more as a playground and for storing files and images that I don't necessarily want to find on the World Wide Web.
Since my telephones work via Telekom, I also use the corresponding one MagentaCloud, which is part of my telephone contract.
As an Apple user, it is also a good idea to iCloud to use for data comparison of my own devices.
But since I mostly work with Microsoft Office, I also use and preferably OneDrive. And as an Amazon customer, I couldn't resist the free offer to have all my photos on the Amazon Drive to lay.
And since that is more than enough for me, I have shut down other storage options that I can definitely recommend. This includes the well-known dropbox, Strato HiDrive or the IONOS HiDrive as well as the Google Drive. And should my data volumes exceed the cloud capacities used, which will certainly not happen, I can also reactivate these cloud services.
But if you think it would be better to store everything in one cloud, I reply that different clouds can be used for different tasks and purposes and thus save you the costs of a larger cloud.
In the event that you always work with personal data, especially that of other fellow citizens, or even research-intensively, I strongly recommend that you use your own server and thus maintain your independence.
"And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes."
Ted Stevens, speech before the US Senate on network neutrality (28 June 2006)
