Is backing up computers online secure? (1 Viewer)

SWJJ

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Do these companies just have massive stockpiles of customers personal informaton?


If the federal government decided they needed to examine this information in the sake of preventing terrorism, would they be able to?


A lot of people listen to Rush Limbaugh, a lot

and he is now sponsered by Carbonite.com, and I was wondering who has access to all this info...

Do you back up your computer online?

Are you concerned about the information that is out there?
 
Depends. Most commercial-level online services offer encryption as part of the service. The only people that can access the data are those with the secret key (password), and if you lose that, you're SOL. No one can access it.

I would imagine that consumer level services have something similar, with varying degrees of effectiveness (encryption strength) and safeguards to recover a lost key. I would check the TOS of each individual service.
 
All US based companies will give the government access to your backups if they have a warrant. The government's ability to read those files depends on the encryption and the agency doing the reading.

Carbonite can decrypt your data (see their privacy policy) if you rely solely on their encryption. They will provide government access without a warrant if they believe your backups contain "illegal or prohibited data." Your spouse or executor can also access the files after your death.
 
so if the government wants access to the personal provate information of all the people rush limbaugh convinces to use carbonite and tells corbonite they are doing something illeal carbonite will surrender it.

I believe more and more that the NSA has all the information or the ability to get all of the information on any private citizen they so desire.

Enemy of the state kinda stuff.

And I thinkk it is a shame the government has this kind of power.

Did I start this on the tech board or was it moved here?
 
so if the government wants access to the personal provate information of all the people rush limbaugh convinces to use carbonite and tells corbonite they are doing something illeal carbonite will surrender it.

I believe more and more that the NSA has all the information or the ability to get all of the information on any private citizen they so desire.

Enemy of the state kinda stuff.

And I thinkk it is a shame the government has this kind of power.

The government could request that data without warrants since Carbonite has very lax privacy standards. Any incriminating evidence probably wouldn't hold up in court though.

The FBI and state agencies can't do much about encryption if your case isn't related to terrorism. Like buzd said, theoretically you should be able to hide data from the NSA, but they can probably crack most encryption if they really want to. Generally terrorists should avoid transmitting any decipherable data over the internet.

Did I start this on the tech board or was it moved here?

I moved it to the Tech Board, if you'd rather it go in a political direction I can reEE it.
 
But if you have stuff that NSA cares that much about, I think I would rather them have access to it :hihi:. (but I understand and share the indignation with the principle).

We could all be on the watch list after all the key words in this thread. :hihi:
 

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