Security Concern with icloud
This is a
good essay on the security trade-offs with cloud backup:
iCloud backups have not eliminated this problem, but they
have made it far less common. This is, like almost everything in tech, a
trade-off:
- Your data is far safer from irretrievable loss if it is synced/backed up, regularly, to a cloud-based service.
- Your data is more at risk of being stolen if it is synced/backed up, regularly, to a cloud-based service.
Ideally, the companies that provide such services minimize the risk
of your account being hijacked while maximizing the simplicity and ease
of setting it up and using it. But clearly these two goals are in
conflict. There's no way around the fact that the proper balance is
somewhere in between maximal security and minimal complexity.
Further, I would wager heavily that there are thousands and thousands
more people who have been traumatized by irretrievable data loss (who
would have been saved if they'd had cloud-based backups) than those who
have been victimized by having their cloud-based accounts hijacked (who
would have been saved if they had only stored their data locally on
their devices).
It is thus, in my opinion, terribly irresponsible to advise people to
blindly not trust Apple (or Google, or Dropbox, or Microsoft, etc.)
with "any of your data" without emphasizing, clearly and adamantly, that
by only storing their data on-device, they greatly increase the risk of
losing everything.
It's true. For most people, the risk of data loss is greater than the risk of data theft.
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