I have been called a retro-grouch for my firm stance against keeping my data in "the cloud", but this is a perfect example of how the cloud can go wrong.
How do you protect yourself from a similar fate? The way I do it is by managing all of my data locally on my laptop (and of course making religious, at-least-once-daily backups of said data). I download all my email using POP3, from a VPS that I am paying for into fetchmail / procmail / mutt on my laptop. My address book is managed locally in a YAML database, and my calendar is managed using flat text files and Remind. Note that none of this precludes remote access to my data, either; I carry a copy of PuTTY on my USB drive, and with the appropriate SSH key and/or S/Key password I can access my data, securely, from anywhere in the world.
That's just one way of going about it, of course; you don't have to go all Unix-retro to achieve the same peace of mind. The theory is simple: just find a way to consolidate the master copies of your important data on machines that are physically under your control, and then make frequent backups of these machines. If possible, also make sure that you have some sort of service agreement with the servers you rely upon for email, Web service, XMPP, and so on. Yes, it is more expensive, and yes it's more difficult than just signing up for a free GMail account, but your data is worth it.
I think there are two questions about the cloud: Do we trust the company? Do they care?
In this case I don't think anyone's terribly worried about Google not having backups or dropping off the radar tomorrow, but they pretty obviously don't care about individual customers.
That can be solved by dealing with a small to medium sized business that has real interest in keeping you as a customer. We pay all of $10 a month for the place where our email is hosted, and the customer support has always been a charm usually responding within an hour and at the longest thusfar, three hours.
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I have been called a retro-grouch for my firm stance against keeping my data in "the cloud", but this is a perfect example of how the cloud can go wrong.
How do you protect yourself from a similar fate? The way I do it is by managing all of my data locally on my laptop (and of course making religious, at-least-once-daily backups of said data). I download all my email using POP3, from a VPS that I am paying for into fetchmail / procmail / mutt on my laptop. My address book is managed locally in a YAML database, and my calendar is managed using flat text files and Remind. Note that none of this precludes remote access to my data, either; I carry a copy of PuTTY on my USB drive, and with the appropriate SSH key and/or S/Key password I can access my data, securely, from anywhere in the world.
That's just one way of going about it, of course; you don't have to go all Unix-retro to achieve the same peace of mind. The theory is simple: just find a way to consolidate the master copies of your important data on machines that are physically under your control, and then make frequent backups of these machines. If possible, also make sure that you have some sort of service agreement with the servers you rely upon for email, Web service, XMPP, and so on. Yes, it is more expensive, and yes it's more difficult than just signing up for a free GMail account, but your data is worth it.
I think there are two questions about the cloud: Do we trust the company? Do they care?
In this case I don't think anyone's terribly worried about Google not having backups or dropping off the radar tomorrow, but they pretty obviously don't care about individual customers.
That can be solved by dealing with a small to medium sized business that has real interest in keeping you as a customer. We pay all of $10 a month for the place where our email is hosted, and the customer support has always been a charm usually responding within an hour and at the longest thusfar, three hours.