QOTW: Do you upload photos to the cloud?

by Parm Mann on 5 September 2014, 16:20

Tags: Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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Remember when the clouds were only good for spoiling a sunny day? How times have changed. Today, the cloud can be used for all sorts of tech-related wizardry, and whether you're in the market for a new piece of software, a smartphone, a games console or even a car, everything is said to be made better by the much-vaunted power of the cloud.

It all sounds marvellous, doesn't it? And it can be, in the right scenario. Arguably the most common usage case exists on modern smartphones, all of which have the baked-in ability to take your photographs and store them automatically on a remote server. Apple calls it iCloud, Google calls it Drive and Microsoft calls it OneDrive, but they all offer the same promise - take a photo on your phone and you can have it whisked away into the cloud where it's kept safe for you to share with friends or access from any web-connected device.

"iCloud is easy to set up." ..... "iCloud lets you share what you want. With the people you choose." .....
"iCloud helps give you peace of mind." ~ Apple Corporation

That's the idea, but the past week's events have changed the forecast from cloudy to overcast. On August 31st, hundreds of private celebrity pictures were leaked onto the Internet, causing many to point fingers at iCloud and the misconception of cloud security.

The leak has dominated the week's news, but what has it meant to you, the consumers? Do you automatically upload photos from your smartphone to the cloud? Have recent events made you reconsider? And irrespective of the content, what would it take for you to trust a cloud storage solution? As always, join the debate using the comments facility below.



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HEXUS Forums :: 47 Comments

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I upload to the cloud but only from the phone (and automatically). Most pictures I want to keep for long periods will be taken with a proper camera and may or may not get uploaded to the cloud.
Yes, automatically from my phone. I sort them out and delete what I don't want to keep when I get home, and store the ones I immediately know I want to save to my hard drives too.

I don't take any photos of myself or others naked, but I'm not going to admonish people who do, or tell them it's their fault for being stupid. This should always have been a concern for the cloud service providers. I think any cloud service packaged with a smartphone deal should have insisted upon two-step authentication, and I also think the services should offer to encrypt anything you upload. It's unrealistic to expect everyone on the planet to become as security-conscious as those of us who stumble upon this advice in the course of our daily tech site browsing. The impact of a security breach of this kind must be devastating, and nobody deserves that.
I don't take photo's … end of.
No way - no trust in the cloud, especially if it's free. My files in my place, properly backed up and fully secure.
Nope nope nope. I might be getting a Synology NAS soon, and I *might* let my phone automatically upload to it. But there's no way in hell I'm going to upload photos to corporations who fall under the overreach of tyrannical government.