My stuff, in my computer. No Cloud for me, no Sir: discuss.

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We are not all the same and, when it comes to computing, there are huge differences in what different people do with them, under what circumstances and for what purposes.

There have been here many technical discussions about using the Cloud, cloud-oriented applications and problems, in particular security ones, that are found when working “in the Cloud.” But here I want to deal, not with technical aspects or problems such as those being discussed even right today here, in other forums. What I intend is to start a discussion from a different point of view that, to me, goes to heart of the matter of how relevant is the cloud for doing ‘creative’ work. And I do start by making a deliberately provocative comment that, I hope, will spark an interesting and productive discussion. I don’t expect this discussion to be just an exchange “for or against” this opening comment, but one that meanders a bit, to better illuminate all the interesting places that computers occupy in the work of creative people, but which I mean the likes of scientists, writers, graphic artists, music composers, certain makers of animated movies, etc. That are also often independent individuals, or quasi-independent ones that work, in any given day, in ways that are close to the way independent people work.

So I begin by dividing users according to their the Cloud involvement, or lack of it:

There are those of us for whom what is going on is part of one’s daily life, in particular in the case of those working on IT as employees of, or a scontractors, consultants, etc. for companies that are eagerly ballooning into the Cloud, throwing overboard all that messy “legacy” ballast; so this defines their  job: see how to make that work, and work safely without annoying their customers too much. Which sometimes they can do and sometimes they can’t.

Then there are those of us who are independent or quasi-independent (see above), individual computer users whose computers are also their work horses for doing whatever interesting and even profitable thing they do with a computer: write a program to calculate the rate of sea level rise around the world by processing satellite altimetry from NASA and ESA missions; compose a symphony; write a novel — and do some of the preparatory research for that by scouring the Web.

Someone like that would be me. And to me, the availability of low-cost but powerful enough PCs where one can do – and keep – all of one’s stuff,  was the revolution of revolutions in computer-related work. It was bye, bye to mainframes and their priestly operators. It was joyful independence with a glorious crashing of chains. So: “No Cloud for me!”

I don’t travel with a PC as a companion; a thumb-drive would do to carry to my destination, and then bring back home from there what I need to do the work and what I share of the results of this work: wherever I go, there will be a PC waiting for me to use there. So: nothing to worry about the security, or the lack of it, of applications designed to work in the Cloud, for me.

So now I hope this is enough for others to pick apart and reveal what they see as the errors in what I have written. And, above everything else, I also hope people will care to say something illuminating about all this.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

people will care to say something

There really is a whole lot to say, no matter what language.  Is art going through the hart, really? Mostly anything is defined by businesscases and greed, and not by the purpose of common sense and need, and making things simply better for everyone. Who can forsee the future, will minkind be able to handle IT-automation and IT-algorithm driven futured?

* _ ... _ *

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[Fred]

Here we go again.
This is the RANTS section, isn’t it?
Peculiar that my text has been altered without my confirmation, like someone else owns my texts.
Dispickable and weird.

* _ ... _ *

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Fred.

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Microfix, ClearThunder

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Fred: “Peculiar that my text has been altered without my confirmation, like someone else owns my texts.“, This is very odd: There should have been a note from the MVP who edited it, saying something like “This comment has been edited for content” and maybe adding some advice on what not to do to avoid having things edited out. Maybe Susan should look into this.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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Microfix

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Fred, I can only sympathise, even in the RANTS section! although a friend of mine from ‘Warner Bros’ agrees

why haven’t I moderated in over a month?

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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I would like to add to my original comment at the start of this thread, that ‘creative’ work is what I call here a certain kind of work done by a certain kind of people that I have defined in that original comment, while by no means I want to imply that everyone else is either someone who uses a PC for email and watching cat videos, or else are some sort of soulless myrmidons, or “company men.” My degrees are all in engineering and I am very proud of being an engineer that does things that no many other engineers do, not because they are more important, or better, but because that is where the meandering river of life has taken me — and I am not complaining, quite the opposite. IT people are technicians and engineers creative in figuring out solutions to tricky problems and as they do that, increasing our knowledge and understanding of present or potential dangers and ways of deal with those, or prepare to defend from them.

But I am interested in concentrating in that smaller subset of computers users I have listed in the opening comment, calling them ‘creatives’, to which I would add: Website developers, mathematicians who use computers to solve theoretical problems, game developers — without believing that this exhausts the list. So ‘creative’ and ‘creatives’ are words meant to be used here in this well-defined and narrow sense.

Some of these ‘creatives’ work mostly alone and some might combine efforts in collaborations that may be temporary or permanent, and even lead to the formation of commercial companies, as it sometimes happens, or to, let us say, the start of a new Linux distro project.

One reason why I am starting this thread, is that I do not think that enough has been discussed already of the ‘creatives’ kind of computer work — and of their needs.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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‘The Cloud’ – it all sounds so fluffy and lovely, doesn’t it? Little cherubs with harps and haloes, joyously watching over our data for us

Well, I was suspicious of it right from the get-go. I prefer to keep my data firmly where I can see it, and firmly where I have control over it. Locally. If I lose it, or it gets stolen, then that’s my look out, and my responsibility

Ditto any applications I run. I want them where I can see them. I want to be able to control when they get updated, and when and if they get upgraded to newer versions

It seems to me, more generally speaking, that what ‘they’ want from us, is for us to be ever more subservient to what they think is best for us. So, you no longer own the operating system that you own, and you’re only allowed to run applications that come from their store(s). And, you should entrust them with your data and applications, because momma knows  best

 

So, anyway, I don’t personally use the Cloud for anything except the most trivial of cases. Exchanging transient data via Dropbox or whatever. And I’ll hold out for as long as I can, keeping my stuff locally, looked after by me

 

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NaNoNyMouse wrote:

The Cloud’ – it all sounds so fluffy and lovely, doesn’t it?

Indeed! I’ve said before that these young actresses who have had their personal pictures stolen and leaked to the world may have thought differently about the practice of uploading them to the internet if they had truly understood that’s what they were doing. “The cloud” seems personal and safe, fluffy and harmless, but if you say “upload to someone else’s server somewhere on the internet,” why, that sounds a lot more risky, like your personal stuff might just be leaked if it is uploaded there. Of course, most of these “hacks” probably amount to using brute force or rainbow tables to crack the password, but still, if the people had known what “the cloud” really means, they may have used stronger passwords, or just decided to give the whole thing a “pass,” or at least given it a pass for the more potentially embarrassing photos.

I’m a fan of personal computing. Before there were PCs, there were mainframes and minicomputers (“mini” being relative… the things were the size of upright, full size filing cabinets), and they were not usually used by one person at a time. They were used by many people, each with their own terminal. All data was stored centrally, and the terminals were just the user interface to the computer, not doing a whole lot of computing on their own.

PCs were the revolutionary, disruptive technology. One person, one PC was a possibility, and your data could be stored locally, controlled by yourself in the manner you see fit. Your ability to use computational power was not dependent on someone else’s administration of the mainframe. Lots of PCs back in the day were not networked, but for many tasks, they didn’t need to be. A secretary could type a letter on a word processor and store the file on the hard drive, and make backups of it to a floppy. Same’s true for a spreadsheet or any other kind of data file. Not being dependent on a central entity for things to work at all was fantastic in the office, and it enabled home computing in a way that would not have been possible with the old mainframe model.

Now PCs have been around for so long that they’re old news, and the marketing guys always need something to be new and exciting to sell to people. There have been a number of attempts at this, from the “thin client” trend of the 1990s to the increasing reliance on the cloud today.

When most cloud providers define what it is they do, they don’t just say “meh, we’re a data center with a trendier name.” Cloud services are meant to be more resilient and scalable than the old model of simply renting a server at a data center that would be “yours,” and if you needed more bandwidth or server capacity, it would take some effort and time to make that happen. With “cloud,” you may have surge capacity built into the contract, or if not, you can call the provider and request more power and get it relatively quickly.

Not all users of the word “cloud” mean that. When Acronis, the maker of the True Image backup program, began pushing people to buy their cloud backup services, it almost certainly was not redundant, fault-tolerant, and scalable. More than likely, it was just a server somewhere out there, with a trendier name.

Cloud services are not universally good or bad, and like all things, they have their pluses and minuses. If you’ve seen the comments in the can of worms I opened when I started the “Kudos to the NWS” thread, a lot of people are not happy with the new NWS (US National Weather Service) radar site. They find it so slow as to be unusable, which I have seen a few times, but not constantly as other people have reported.

According to one article I read about the issue, the reason is that when the NWS revamped their radar site, dumping the site that was based on Flash (which has reached EOL) and replacing it with a version based on HTML5, they also moved from a cloud services provider to their own hosting. Quite evidently, they lack either the server or bandwidth capacity to make it work well, perhaps both, whereas they’d been fine when their servers were “in the cloud” from their perspective. From the perspective of the user, it’s still in the cloud, since we don’t actually control the servers that process the radar information and make it available to users.

On the other hand, when your information or even your business is dependent on someone else’s hardware, there is always that possibility that they will one day “alter the deal.” Unless you can get a judge to side with you (by no means a certainty, even if you’re right), you’re out of luck, and at the very least you are out of luck until the judge decides, which can take a really long time, especially if the strategy is to do just that, to make it take so long that by the time you get to court, you’ve already got nothing left.

I keep meticulous local backups of all of my important data and of all of my daily use machines, but I would take advantage of a service like Backblaze if it was feasible to add offsite redundancy to the data. The problem I have is that my upstream internet speed is so slow that it would take months to back up just one of my PCs, and by the time it was done, it would already be a few months out of date. I’d want to be certain that all data were securely encrypted with a strong password that only I have access to, so that the data never leaves my PC in a form that would be interesting to anyone else.

Maybe someday I’ll get decent internet, but for now, what I have is the best that’s available, other than cellular, and the cellular plans I’ve looked at are only unlimited on phones. Tether the phone to a PC, and the unlimited plan gets limited right quick, and when you’re talking about backups to remote servers, that crunches through the data limits very easily. I know there are ways to tether without the provider knowing specifically (a rooted phone can be made to not inform the carrier that it is tethering), but they have ways to find out, and I’m not about trying to cheat on such things anyway.

NaNoNyMouse wrote:

Ditto any applications I run. I want them where I can see them. I want to be able to control when they get updated, and when and if they get upgraded to newer versions

For sure. Any resource I find on the web that I want to refer back to or save for future use or reference gets saved locally. You can’t count on any resource on the web that’s there today to be there forever. A web page, a picture, a video, they can all disappear, and given enough time, probably will. Don’t wait until tomorrow to get a local copy of the thing, whatever it may be… strike while the iron is hot, because you don’t know when it won’t be. It’s not just that way with the internet, of course– it’s that way for everything. The only thing constant is change.

Anything cloud-based that is cached locally can be taken away on the whim of someone else too if you don’t have control over the local copy. There have been reports of people who “bought” e-books on Amazon, only to have Amazon decide that these purchases are now void, and even though they are saved on the Kindle or other device, they are deleted as soon as Amazon says they must be.

Movies or music can be like that too, and it’s also true of an app on the Apple iOS app store that Apple decides it doesn’t want you to have anymore. They can (as far as I understand) delete it right off of your phone, and since that’s the only way you can get apps, you’re at their mercy. Google can, as far as I know, do the same with Android, but the odds of a user defeating that are better. (Most?) Android devices can sideload, meaning to have apps installed even if they do not come from the Play store, so if you can get ahold of the apk (that’s the format that Android apps come in), you can restore the app yourself. There are sites where you can download lots of these, including older versions. Most of the apps on that site are the same ones that had been downloaded from Play, but in Android land, some apps are distributed directly, in the manner that Windows programs usually are, rather than through Play. Sometimes the non-play versions are actually better, like with the non-Play version of Bitwarden, which has no trackers (the Play version has two trackers, fairly innocuous ones as trackers go, but they’re there).

A rooted Android device can also use a backup app to back up and restore app data and the apps themselves, and when they are restored, I believe they’re actually sideloaded apps at that point, not subject to Google’s whims anymore. The program I use, Titanium Backup, has options to link or unlink apps to the Play store, so you can control which ones are administered by Google. The ones that are unlinked, I believe, are invisible to Play… if you look up the app it will show as not being installed, even though it is. I don’t have Play on my phone (it’s de-googled), so I can’t say for sure.

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It really amazes me when I receive photos attached to emails that are 4 or 5 Megabytes in size.  I have some older videos that are that size.  Anyway, I remember the last times I got together with relatives I hadn’t seen in awhile for a holiday dinner. They sat around with smartphones at the ready, and were showing their photos and videos to everyone.  I asked one of them how much memory their phone had and they didn’t know, so I said that it must have a lot to be able to store all those photos and videos they were swiping through.  They replied “oh, it’s all stored in the cloud”.  To them taking the time to copy at least the older photos and videos to their computer was practically unheard of.

So okay, maybe this is way things are done now for smartphones, but I personally don’t see the need to use “the cloud” for storing average files one may have on their computer.  I still use a cheap flip phone that does take pictures, but I have never used it for that. It’s just an emergency phone to me.  Yes, I’m old fashioned, but my main computer has Two Terabytes of hard drive storage space, a One Terabyte external hard drive, plus other older computers that have lots of space for storing things.  Even though I can easily afford it, I just can’t see paying for some “Cloud” service to do what I can do myself at home safely and securely.

If I stepped on any toes here I apologize, it’s just the way I do things and my thoughts on the matter.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Charlie: I get those very large image files when I download them from the Web; they are usually PNG. If I need to email them to someone else, I convert them to GIF or JPG/JPEG first. Those formats are quite frugal in the size of their files, and the resolution loss, if any, is not noticeable, unless one wants to see them on a 60-inch 4K-capable display and look at it from very close to the screen, I guess. I use my Mac’s application software Preview (it’s from Apple and comes pre-installed for free with the computer) and it is very easy to do the conversion with it. I imagine that there is something for doing that in Windows and Linux as well.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Yeah, I sometimes get PNG’s from the Web, but the pictures I get in emails are mostly JPG’s.  The senders of these huge pictures are probably using the highest Megapixel setting available on their phone or camera. They apparently don’t know that it’s not necessary, and a 2 or 3 Megapixel setting will be good enough for a snapshot of some cute moment.

Yes, I do take the large photos and resample them with Paint Shop Pro on another older computer.  I can resample (resize) a huge 3 Megabyte jpg down to 300 to 400 Kilobytes, which is a good size for viewing on a computer.  In a case where I want to have the picture printed, I leave it the original size until it’s printed.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Steve

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[Alex5723]

Charlie wrote:

Even though I can easily afford it, I just can’t see paying for some “Cloud” service to do what I can do myself at home safely and securely.

But you can’t show pictures/videos, access documents.. when you are away from your PC, unless you keep your PC always on running some remote access software on both your PC and mobile.

I personally use the cloud (iCloud, Google Photos) for easy access to photos..documents.. and sharing.
On the other hand backups are done on external HDD, no cloud.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Alex5723.

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Charlie

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When I’m away from my PC, it’s shut down and can’t be accessed.  Any photos or whatever that I want to share with friends or relatives have already been sent to them via email.  In a rare case where I may need a computer while away from home, I put what I need on my laptop and take it with me.  People were amazed at my old IBM T40 ThinkPad with Win XP, and are even more amazed at my Sony Vaio with Linux Mint!

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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[OscarCP]

Alex: “But you can’t show pictures/videos, access documents.. when you are away from your PC …  ” Not necessarily.

People like me, for example, do not need to do that if they do not want to, as I explained in my original comment: All I need to take with me is an USB thumb drive.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by OscarCP.

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Steve

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Apropos of this “cloud” thing…

Yesterday, I could not access my company’s email server, either via Outlook or by opening a browser to do webmail. I kept getting error messages indicating that authentication had failed. No known password worked, so I contacted our IT department.

It turns out that the email server for our small company experienced a problem, unknown as to its nature but major in scope. Several people, including myself and the chief IT person, had our accounts disappear completely. Anybody who stored their business email on the server (in the cloud) lost all of it. Not just yesterday’s mail, but all of it, irretrievably.

I thank my lucky stars that I use an email client (Outlook) to download my email for storage on my PC and on backup drives.

 

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Cloud = a server stored elsewhere.  Someone should have had a backup.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Cybertooth, Do you have a way to save elsewhere both each email and its metadata, such as: who sent it, when, and what was the subject? Otherwise one gets the copied emails labeled each with some weird character string that tells one nothing when looking for a particular email among the hundreds and even thousands one has saved by copying them elsewhere.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Because I use Outlook, I have a .PST file that contains the emails and everything associated with them. As this is probably the single most important file on my computer, I keep two backups of it on different external drives. There’s actually three backups of it, if you count the one that Outlook makes in its own folder.

That .PST file is also the only one that (ironically) I have considered backing up to an offsite server–after encrypting it locally of course. But I’ve never gotten around to it.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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OscarCP

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You can trust the cloud if you want but remember there will always be thunder storms….

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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DriftyDonN, Steve, Myst, OscarCP, SueW, Charlie, NaNoNyMouse

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That’s very good!  I’ve got to remember that.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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My security software offers free cloud storage.  Uhhhh … no thanks. It’s bad enough my work email is on the cloud, albeit IBM’s.  But I back up that cloud-based email and save it to my computer, like many here do. Ditto the data. I’ll back up to my own physical devices.

It’s still concerns me that the DoD has that multi-billion $ contract with MS to store their data on the cloud. Our national secrets will be stored on two unreliable things;  Microsoft and ‘The Cloud.’

 

"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. And I say let us give them all they want" ----- William T. Sherman

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https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/mysterious-bug-is-deleting-microsoft-teams-sharepoint-files/

That’s interesting now isn’t it?

But to say no cloud at all?  Your data is already on the cloud put there by your vendors.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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[OscarCP]

Susan: Look at my original comment: not everybody is in the same boat.

Back there, I am writing about “creative” people. If you do the things I do, or else, write a novel using the word processor of your choice, you have no need for the cloud to do that. Nor is your data already there by default.

If you are also in the situation I described there, that also is mine when traveling away from home, you do not need to be able to access your stuff on the Web: a USB thumb with several Gigabytes capacity, something quite normal these days, is more than enough to carry your novel-in-progress and whatever information you need to continue writing it wherever you are going (or the stuff I need to continue my research in a joint project collaboration with those colleagues I am going to visit, something I’ve done many times this way), as long as there is a computer made available there that you can use to continue the job. Or, depending on the situation, you can email or transmit copies by (let’s say) sftp and remote login of some of that in advance.

To access your email, you can log in remotely to your email account, if you really have to.

On the other hand, if you are a “creative” that wants to use a certain Cloud service yes or yes, all I can say to you is: be my guest.

And, as some of the people commenting here have been explaining why they do not use anything on the Cloud and that they can manage just fine anyways, one does not have to be a “creative” to get things done without using anything on the Cloud. Other people have to use it, absolutely, but they are in a different boat.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by OscarCP.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by OscarCP.

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Fred

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No additional comments, but how to trust IT these days? The color of ones eyes? Some very good lecture is available, in many languages: how to protect and defend against snooping your stuff, even counter-espionage is based on that paradigma.

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[bratkinson]

From day 1 of ‘the cloud’, I’ve always viewed it as a major security risk and have never knowingly put anything on the cloud other than to transfer a large file now and then using Dropbox or its competitors.  Foolish me actually installed Dropbox 7-8 years ago.  When I was done sending the large Powerpoint file, I removed the application, then spent several hours cleaning up the rest of my then Win 7 PC of files and countless registry entries.

Why do I consider the cloud a security risk?  Simple.  If someone can ‘dream up’ a security system, someone else can get past it.  From encrypted military messages 100 years ago to present day bank computer security teams, there’s ALWAYS somebody that successfully breaks in.  I’ve lost track of how many online companies I have dealt with have sent me a ‘sorry, but your personal data has been compromised’ email.  At least in those cases, I know WHERE my personal data was and what might have been compromised.  Even Equifax, one of the 3 credit-score companies was hacked not long ago and massive amounts of data compromised.  Again, I knew WHERE my data was…mostly.

But these days, most, if not all large corporations use ‘the cloud’ to supply backup capabilities in the event of an outage at their main computer site.  They also use the cloud to transfer data from individual desktop computers at remote company locations including the desktop applications now run at the main company site just like they did when there were local on that desktop.

Are the incredibly long supposedly hack-proof security passwords 100% reliable?  Probably.  I would think any hacker with a brain in their head would go after the intermediate network locations and ‘tap the line’, in my old geezer language.  Consider, too, that major resources such as the electrical grid are largely controlled via the web and use a limited variety (makes and models) of internet-controlled switches to do whatever electric companies do.  I’ve read of various hacker-caused power outages around the world.  There’s increasingly more frequent stories about the vulnerability of the grid.

And, as others have stated, if you put your data in the cloud, you have absolutely no idea where in the world it may be stored…duplicated across multiple locations in multiple countries that may not (always) be friendly to the USA.

One has to wonder, too, how much access does the FBI, NSA, DHS and other federal ‘security’ organizations in the USA have access to our cloud files?  And what about their counterparts in other countries?  These days I read about how various government agencies are ‘scanning’ every byte of information they can get their hands on to determine if we law abiding citizens pose any kind of security or political risk, real or imagined.  Yeah, there’s nothing we can do about it.

In short, to the maximum degree possible, MY files stay on MY computers!  I take 100% responsibility for keeping sufficient backups to handle any disaster including a tornado taking my house away, ALL without using the cloud.

Food for thought: If our enemies want to attack the USA, shutting down the grid would be most effective, but wiping out the cloud and telecom satellites is just as effective, in my opinion.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by bratkinson.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by bratkinson.

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OscarCP wrote:

All I need to take with me is an USB thumb drive

I will never connect a personal USB thumb drive to a foreign PC that may have been compromised.

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I would never log in to a cloud provider on such a PC either. If it is compromised, it could have a keylogger that steals my password.

If I want to go out of the house and have my data available, I’ll just bring the entire PC and solve that particular issue! No cloud needed, as the data is stored locally, though encrypted with a really long and annoying to type in password that was randomly generated.

Any time I am going anywhere where wanting access to my “stuff” is a possibility, I probably already have my laptop with me. I grab it any time I think I might want to have it when I go out the door… certainly if I ever go “out of town.” I don’t foresee having any need to access my data in those times when I’ve chosen to leave the lappy home… and if I do, it’s when I am relatively close by, so if I really needed to, I could just go home and get the laptop.

I don’t really have the same “sharing” mentality that a lot of people do, though (which is probably why I also have no interest in social media). I have a lot of pictures, but 99% of them are only ever seen by me, which was generally the idea when I took those pictures. They’re for me… I have no reason or wish to share them with others,with only rare exceptions. For those, I send the pics by email, as another poster has already said.

I can’t think of a use case where I would benefit from having my stuff “in the cloud,” even without the downsides that have been well covered here. I just don’t have any desire for my stuff to be available anywhere I go even if I didn’t bring my laptop.

 

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Alex5723 wrote:

OscarCP wrote:

All I need to take with me is an USB thumb drive

I will never connect a personal USB thumb drive to a foreign PC that may have been compromised.

Never connect an unknown usbdrive to my pc’s  Leaves the question: how to recognize a compromised computer or usbdrive or internet-connection or website or someone/thing checking all data going through the connection or or monitoring by placing trackers cookies fingerprints etc or refusing secured connections…. etc etc.

So travelling with a thumbdrive or usbdrive is one of the safest and most sensible ways to go. So is not trusting all data-eager-earningmodels. If needed take your portable programs with you on this drive or dvd in your suitcase.

* _ ... _ *

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OscarCP

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Fred: “If needed take your portable programs with you on this drive or dvd in your suitcase.”

Actually not in my suitcase (or rather, my mid-sized duffel bag: I always travel light), particularly if I am flying, because suitcase and thumb drive might end in Nairobi when I am flying to Holland. So: not in the suitcase, but in my shirt’s breast pocket. And my passport in my jacket’s inner pocket, and I keep the jacket on all the way (it gets cold up there, especially during night flights.)

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OscarCP wrote:

Fred: “If needed take your portable programs with you on this drive or dvd in your suitcase.”

Actually not in my suitcase (or rather, my mid-sized duffel bag: I always travel light), particularly if I am flying, because suitcase and thumb drive might end in Nairobi when I am flying to Holland. So: not in the suitcase, but in my shirt’s breast pocket. And my passport in my jacket’s inner pocket, and I keep the jacket on all the way (it gets cold up there, especially during night flights.)

Very witty, and now a practicle example

So you getting off the airoplane and then come to the border police:

Q. Goodday. Do you have anything to declare?
A. No sir ….
Q. Please provide us the passwords of all your files and accounts and phones and other devices and disks or computer equipment you carry…..

than what? … even you, as a citizen of the US, are obligated to hand them over for thorough investigation as well. Who knows the results and how long that will take?

At that time a trustworthy cloud service is very useful to keep your things “safe” and at hand.
So choose your cloud provider wisely.
[You may not know who or what to encounter between the clouds.]

* _ ... _ *

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So you give them the device account password “1234” which you set just for them to laugh at, but don’t mention the encrypted volume that doesn’t show in the drive list. If they even want to hassle you among the approximately 100% of other passengers who also have electronic devices, they’re not likely to notice that the size of the volumes they can see does not add up to the total volume of the disk, and they may not even know what that means if they do. They’re not forensic data analysts, after all.

And if they do notice that the volumes don’t add up to the size of the disk, is there actually anything in that space, or is it just unallocated with whatever random data may be left over from the previous volume that used to be there? Nothing illegal about having unallocated space on your hard drive or SSD, after all!

That said, though, ever since they put the backscatter and shortwave scanners in at airports, I’ve sadly considered my time as an air passenger to have ended, and that’s become that much more definitive in the last year and change.

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Ascaris: “That said, though, ever since they put the backscatter and shortwave scanners in at airports, I’ve sadly considered my time as an air passenger to have ended”

This made me remember what I actually do with the thumb drive before walking through the people scanner while going through airport security, before boarding a plane: I stick it, discreetly, before entering the Security Area, in my duffel bag, inside some underwear tee shirt, in the middle of other more or less opaque bits and pieces that rarely get scrutinized, and when my turn arrives, set the duffel bag on the conveyor belt and on its way to the luggage scanner. So far, no problems; X-rays have not hurt it, again so far. Besides, the most critical stuff has already been sent ahead via Internet before my day of departure. If ever someone working in luggage scanning stops the duffel on its tracks and, after digging inside it, picks up the thumb drive and, holding it up like some disgusting bug, asks me: “And what is this, precisely?” I’ll tell them:

“That’s my thumb drive.”

“You should have put it separate, with other things in the little dish.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“What is inside it?”

“Things I need to do some work with my colleagues at XXX in YYY.”

“We need to look at it. What’s the password?”

“There is no password and it is not encrypted; it has been scanned for anything bad, like viruses, etc. Please, have a look and also, please, don’t wipe anything out: I need all there to do my work.”

“Wait here.”

Of course, this will be my last resort act. So far, it has not been necessary. I hope that, when I do, it will spare me something worse than a delay in boarding my plane. But this is real life, so one never knows, but lives on, all the same.

Once I clear luggage checking, back goes the thumb drive into my shirt pocket.

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Fred: Or else lie about carrying something like a thumb drive on you; besides my jacket, I also put on a jumper before boarding the plane; as I said, it gets cold up there. And my shirt pocket is made quite invisible, as well. When they ask me if I carry “anything electronic” I usually show them my quartz wristwatch. But, so far, I have never been asked for any of those other things you mention. Is that the way it is done in The Netherlands these days? One steps out of a plane in Schiphol and is asked all that at passport control or at customs before being allowed into the country? The lines of people waiting to be checked in this way must be monumental.

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OscarCP wrote:

Charlie: I get those very large image files when I download them from the Web; they are usually PNG. If I need to email them to someone else, I convert them to GIF or JPG/JPEG first. Those formats are quite frugal in the size of their files, and the resolution loss, if any, is not noticeable, unless one wants to see them on a 60-inch 4K-capable display and look at it from very close to the screen, I guess. I use my Mac’s application software Preview (it’s from Apple and comes pre-installed for free with the computer) and it is very easy to do the conversion with it. I imagine that there is something for doing that in Windows and Linux as well.

Have you ever encountered malware etc hidden in pictures- and musicfiles? Quite a different league. So converting is always sensible. What a business , pitty.

* _ ... _ *

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Fred, I added, by mistake, my reply to this comment of yours just above it.

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Good topic OscarCP,
With cloud, it either rains data or a data storm is a result, loss more paranoia, no thanks
Have been safely keeping data offline for years, and off my connected devices and that’s the way I like it
If I need to access data I simply plug it in. (having duplicate copies on other offline devices)

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OscarCP wrote:

I use my Mac’s application software Preview (it’s from Apple and comes pre-installed for free with the computer) and it is very easy to do the conversion with it. I imagine that there is something for doing that in Windows and Linux as well.

Windows 10 comes with Paint3D, which will do the conversion. Personally I use the Gimp for all my image processing. It’s free, and has evolved to be a more than adequate substitute for Photoshop, unless you’re into really heavy-duty stuff

One reason for keeping images in PNG format is if you need to make use of the alpha channel (for sprites and whatnot), but for normal snapshots, JPG is perfectly fine, and as has been mentioned the size savings can be substantial

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About that USB thumb drive of mine that has some people here worried, and also about something more.

My USB thumb drive (different ones over the years) was carried by me, a well-known and trusted person of whoever owned the computer that was ready for my use by the time I departed from home, wherever I was going to visit, not by some masked bandit with an eye patch. And there it was first scanned for bugs that might been lodging in it without my knowledge. I was and am (not right now, but soon I hope, covid allowing) visiting organizations in this way, not some old flame of mine.

Now, about that something more:

Ask yourselves old enough to ask yourselves this: how was your life, both personal and working ones, before there was such a thing as “the Cloud”?

Yes, alright, some of you had stuff in some server that you would access to either download files to your machine or even run some application there. The people I knew that did the latter were doing it because the “server” was one strapping and wickedly powerful and fast supercomputer only certain people were allowed to access. But who knows if others were not doing the same thing on regular servers? (It takes all sorts to make a world.) Certainly our email came from servers. And many used servers in their organization’s LAN. But none of that equals what is now known as “the Cloud.” (Once upon a time, that was a word of art and also slang for referring to the Internet.) And, years and years ago, I would develop and run software on a mainframe that I would have access to via remote login from my PC. Would doing this qualify as “using a server”? (I still do that, on occasion, via remote login, on some work collaborator’s PC situated in some distant place, and recently pretty much everyday (covid be thanked) through a VPN connection to a NASA computer.)

But, nevertheless, were you deprived of something essential in your personal and, or working life because “the Cloud”, as we know it these days, did not yet exist?

I would really like to know your thoughts on this.

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OscarCP wrote:

But, nevertheless, were you deprived of something essential in your personal and, or working life because “the Cloud”, as we know it these days, did not yet exist?

Personally, no.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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A very valid and thought provoking question, Oscar.

Computing was simpler for me before there was ‘the cloud’ And faster. At work, we used to have our own email server. But when it got old (ran just fine as far as I was concerned) they decided not to replace it and sold out to the cheaper Cloud. Soon as they migrated it to the Cloud everything s  l  o  w  e  d down. Downloading email attachments took longer, sending attachments took longer, and multitasking —- working with several emails at once, almost always either crashed the software or just took forever to complete — something our old server did with nary a hiccup. Our cloud provider had a pretty big name, and nobody expected the lag. Certainly not me.

The Cloud is a bunch of computers that you don’t own, can’t touch, don’t see, and have no control over. And brave is the person who stores their personal data on someone else’s computer. As for me, I backup my important data with an encrypted thumb drive and then slip it in my pocket when I’m done. Wherever I go, so does my data.

"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. And I say let us give them all they want" ----- William T. Sherman

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[bratkinson]

OscarCP wrote:

About that USB thumb drive of mine that has some people here worried, and also about something more.

My USB thumb drive (different ones over the years) was carried by me, a well-known and trusted person of whoever owned the computer that was ready for my use by the time I departed from home, wherever I was going to visit, not by some masked bandit with an eye patch. And there it was first scanned for bugs that might been lodging in it without my knowledge. I was and am (not right now, but soon I hope, covid allowing) visiting organizations in this way, not some old flame of mine.

Now, about that something more:

Ask yourselves old enough to ask yourselves this: how was your life, both personal and working ones, before there was such a thing as “the Cloud”?

Yes, alright, some of you had stuff in some server that you would access to either download files to your machine or even run some application there. The people I knew that did the latter were doing it because the “server” was one strapping and wickedly powerful and fast supercomputer only certain people were allowed to access. But who knows if others were not doing the same thing on regular servers? (It takes all sorts to make a world.) Certainly our email came from servers. And many used servers in their organization’s LAN. But none of that equals what is now known as “the Cloud.” (Once upon a time, that was a word of art and also slang for referring to the Internet.) And, years and years ago, I would develop and run software on a mainframe that I would have access to via remote login from my PC. Would doing this qualify as “using a server”? (I still do that, on occasion, via remote login, on some work collaborator’s PC situated in some distant place, and recently pretty much everyday (covid be thanked) through a VPN connection to a NASA computer.)

But, nevertheless, were you deprived of something essential in your personal and, or working life because “the Cloud”, as we know it these days, did not yet exist?

I would really like to know your thoughts on this.

On a good number of occasions, I’ve pondered what life was like for my grandparents, born 1885-95, or thereabouts., in their youth.  No electricity.  No plumbing.  No phone.  No car, either.  Simply put, as they hadn’t been invented and made ‘mainstream’, they were never deprived of them either.  By 1925 did any of them think “Wow!  The kids of today are sooooo lucky to have…..”

At my paternal grandmothers’s funeral in 1974, I got to thinking about the things that were invented in HER lifetime.  WOW!

Remembering my childhood in the ’50s and ’60s, did I feel ‘gypped’ out of anything? Other than being jealous while pumping gas into brand new Cadillacs when I was 16, I never felt gypped.

So now it’s me, at age 73, thinking: “WOW!  The kids of today have it great!  Cell phones!  Facebook!  Twitter!  Instant everything!  You name it!  And they have no idea whatsoever what a BXLE or 0C7 were!”  Nor, do the under-30 crowd have much of an idea of how much of their lives are essentially public knowledge due to their heavy use of those sites!

I’ll be quite content keeping my data to myself as much as possible and literally ‘destroying evidence’ data caches on my computer every night that track what I’ve been doing, where I’ve been, etc.  But I know that some day, there might be police knocking on my door because I looked at a leftist web site, or a rightist site, or anything else the Cancel Culture folks want to cancel…

 

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by bratkinson.

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IMO if you asked most kids today if they think they have it great, they would say no!  In spite of the fact that they have all this technology, they are very often not happy. That’s especially true if they’re being bullied on a Social Media Service.  Some kids have had a cellphone in their hands from the age of 4 or 5 so they don’t think of it as the luxury item we older ones do. To them it’s just another item to use, like a transistor radio was to us.  I feel very lucky to have been a kid in the 50’s, a teenager in the 60’s, and a young adult in the 70’s.  Aside from the Vietnam war, it was a great time to grow up in.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Early in my career work took me to remote areas – no electricity, no plumbing, no phone. And use of a car only on weekends to go into town, grab a beer, take a shower, do some grocery shopping, and call the office.

While working in the bush we lived in tents, slept in sleeping bags rated to -20 Fahrenheit, and light was generated by kerosene lanterns. We did have two luxuries – propane fired refrigerator and cooking stove.

Our weekend house had a wood stove in the kitchen upon which we cooked our meals and heated the house. And, if we set a fire Friday evening we would have hot water sometime on Saturday.

And believe it or not, life was great. Working in places where the deer did not run away as we approached, time to watch beavers building their houses and dams, sharing the garbage pit with bears, having an opportunity to watch a cow moose drop a calf, spectacular nights watching the northern lights, and peace and quiet that only comes with solitude. And living in a place where you can catch your dinner in the local stream, cook it, and complete the meal in an hour is not all bad.

On several occasions while working in old-growth forests a feeling of total peace and calm would come over us.

Then there was the day when my coworker and I sat down for lunch, took a drink out of the stream, and commented on how wonderful the water tasted. After lunch we continued up the stream and discovered that a herd of caribou had been spending the spring and early summer on the snow field that was feeding the drainage. The snow was yellow!

I also had the opportunity to spend summer as a kid at my great-grandparents summer home. Again, no electricity, no plumbing, no phone. It was wonderful.  We were truly wild things while we were there.

Then again, I have never lived within an urban environment when buildings did not have plumbing. But, I have been in urban homes that still had outhouses in the backyards. I am not sure that living in the mid-eighteen fifties in downtown New York would be wonderful experience.

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bratkinson wrote:

So now it’s me, at age 73, thinking: “WOW! The kids of today have it great! Cell phones! Facebook! Twitter! Instant everything! You name it!

That actually makes me feel bad for them. When we grew up, one of those embarrassing moments in school that we’ve all had would (verbally) make its rounds through the grapevine nearly instantly, and then it would die out. Now you’ve got 30 kids in the class with video cameras on them at all times, and the video of the embarrassing moment will be on Youtube from multiple perspectives before any of them even get home from school that day. It will never, ever go away. The video of the hapless kid will still be around when the kid himself is an old man, and it will be there after he passes on. It could even be turned into a meme, like the lightsaber kid’s video.

I am very glad to not have grown up as young people today have to endure. Cell phones, Facebook, Twitter, and instant everything are huge burdens to carry. The kids may not understand that yet, but that’s part of why they’re so bad. They masquerade as things that are helpful and fun, but they’re not. There is a reason that social media addiction is usually described using the same terms as addiction to drugs, and for the dopamine receptors in the brain, there isn’t much of a difference.

People who use social media frequently report that they don’t enjoy it… but they are still compelled to keep at it. Today’s kids have grown up in an environment when that was always the norm, when everyone shared everything with everyone all the time, going back as far as their earliest memories. They know no other reality, and they have no concept of what privacy used to be back when a phone had a dial and was mounted to a wall. They don’t know why they should want it, or why they should be careful with what they share and with whom. By the time they learn why, they will have already let lots of things out into the world, forever. That’s if they ever do learn, which not everyone does.

I wouldn’t give up having grown up without any of that for anything.

 

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I grew up far away and long ago, in South America, spending my primary school vacations in the places of relatives: uncles and aunts. One of my aunts lived in a remote station in the middle of a chaparral-type landscape where she run the local post office, general goods store, and taught grade school in  single-room school in her property, that was little more than a shack. These days there is a pretty big building there housing the local school, named after her.

At nights, in the middle of summer, because sleeping inside was too suffocating, we slept outside, under the stars, and then I was told the local constellations, that were not ones you will find in any published sky atlas. Now and then, herds of cows will come by, driven by men to some distant place for sale or for slaughter, men mostly young, on horseback (we all went around there, to any distance from the houses, on horseback, because the roads were terrible). And at night they will make a big campfire, and after eating a generous roast of beef and drank some generous amounts of wine, they would sing ballads of local famous star-crossed lovers and their suicide pacts; of local duels, hand to hand, by a local chief of police and some famous local bandit — I still remember one called “The Two Crosses”, that referred to the two crosses by the side of a dusty road planted where both men had fallen and died. Not very cheerful stuff, but that is how it was. Our electronic contact with the rest of the world was one-way, listening to broadcast programs around a radio running on batteries charged with a small wind turbine (if one does not count letters or messages either mailed the regular way or sent through some intermediary on horseback or buggy to someone not very far away.) The fridge was powered by burning kerosene.

With the local children, the offspring of the ranch hands, we played innumerable games we more or less made up as we went.

That was way before there were home computers or cell phones, or even phones out there in the country, not to mention Internet, and the mainframes were very large things with lots of vacuum tubes in their inners, found only in big cities, and few places could afford to have even one of those.

We were all very busy, in spite appearances, doing the most important job we were ever going to have to do: being children. And nobody would have dared interfere with that and put as instead on some curriculum-building schedule that took all of our time away from that vital job, “for our own good.”

Now, after many years and a long way away from all of that, I have been working and still work with computers and satellites and have flown here and there by plane and have seen, in this way, far more of the world that those then young cattle drivers and those country children I played with, and even than what my own relatives probably ever got to see. And somehow, in spite of my unscheduled and unregulated upbringing, I still can manage OK with all that I have, and choose, to do now. And sometimes, when I remember them, I hope that the lives of all those I knew back there, some of whom maybe are still around, have been good lives, but who knows.

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Fred, Cybertooth, Kathy Stevens

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Our approach to dealing with sensitive files while traveling internationally is simple. We have all of our material available to assistants at home who can send then to us as required.

We use triple encryption. The files themselves are encrypted. Then, our VPN encrypts all traffic between our computers and their servers. And our email service provider provides end to end encryption of our email traffic and attachments. We also have at least two or three other email addresses/providers that we can share with people who have a need to know.

Technically, no cloud storage to disclose. Nothing on our hard drives of importance and no USB drives.

If we do need to physically carry sensitive material, we simply burn the encrypted files onto CD discs and squirrel them away in our luggage.

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OscarCP

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Disks are also a good way to carry one’s stuff to another place, when one is going to have access to a computer there: the CDs could be full of Metallica albums, and the DVDs of downloaded cat videos, for all that the rest of the world knows.

I like the thumb drive because it is handy for both taking away and then bringing back stuff. And these days, many people do not have external optical drives and most likely none is built into their newer computers. Also: as I am not able to contact remotely my own PC because when I am away it is soundly asleep somewhere not very easy to be found, I instead, sometimes, send to my destination some of the stuff ahead of time.

The main point of all this is that many of us can move around and do our work at home as well as elsewhere, without having to keep our stuff in someone’s else’s computer that is part of “the Cloud.” We might have to try a bit harder to do things — and some people might not have much of an option if they are required to use “the Cloud” based software and, or storage at work. Or if they are “road warriors”.

But, as I wrote earlier on, we are not all rowing in the same boat, so what can be said about some of us is not necessarily something that can be said about all of us.

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OscarCP wrote:

Is that the way it is done in The Netherlands these days?

No, OscarCP. That is how it is done in USA and other countries as well. Just read how “your” border patrol can act following the PatriotAct. Everybody must cooperate, and when one doesn’t, well you can wait and wait. Surely “they” cannot tell the difference between rubbish and emptyness on a computerdrive. And for what rests, all other countries are retarded, some people even drink Starbucks here.

 

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Fred: “That is how it is done in USA and other countries as well. Just read how “your” border patrol can act following the PatriotAct.”

Not in my own experience, at least. The Patriot Act has been around for some twenty years now, and I have traveled abroad many times in those years, so have been through airport security and passport control, the first when leaving and the second when coming back to the USA, without any such fuss. Maybe the people who are in charge of doing passport control can proceed in this way at their own discretion, in certain situations, at least in principle, because being in the first line of defense against what might be coming in with evil intent, they have the power to stop those they deem suspect from coming in. It is the same in other countries, for the same reason.

That is not to say that I am happy about how political decisions have tilted the way immigration, even legal one, and the control of the borders have been handled in recent times, but that is not what has been the normal way for most of my time here — and is a related to, but a different matter from, regular port of entry procedures, only these being relevant to the “thumbs drives and CDs” ways of traveling without resorting to “the Cloud” to stay in touch with, and have access to one’s stuff. Those who would like to discuss immigration policy in this country, or in some other one (this issue is not exclusive to the US), are welcome to start a new thread, maybe also like this one, in”Rants”, and I’ll be glad to join them there.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
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[Fred]

[add to #2351764 :  “simply burn the encrypted files onto CD discs and squirrel them away in our luggage.”]  Don’t tell this when applying for a real security job…

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• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Fred.

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even telex-bands can be added to the 5inch floppies section. When written mail wasn’t yet encrypted people used all sorts transports for carrying messages.

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Cybertooth, OscarCP

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“Don’t tell this when applying for a real security job…”

I have been approached to participate in work that requires security clearances.  I have told the agencies that I am not interested in securing a clearance but some how I am cleared to work on the project anyway.

In my experience, if you have a unique set of skills/knowledge the security clearance application process becomes secondary.

 

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OscarCP

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[Alex5723]

OscarCP wrote:

Not in my own experience, at least. The Patriot Act has been around for some twenty years now, and I have traveled abroad many times in those years, so have been through airport security and passport control, the first when leaving and the second when coming back to the USA, without any such fuss

Yes in my experience.
Last time I visited USA I carried my iPhone and iPad (both secured by PIN).
airport security looked and my iPhone and let me keep it. Then they took my iPad (didn’t ask for PW or Pin) for inspection that took ~45 min While I was waiting at the screening belt.
I don’t know what they did all that time to/with my iPad.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Alex5723.

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Fred

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Alex: It could have been that there was some security alert given to the people examining the documents of those just disembarked off incoming international flights, so they were being extra zealous. And, depending on your reaction, maybe they also enjoyed doing it.

Sometimes other inconveniences occur. People, now and then, sometimes just because of a misspelled name, are mistakenly thought to be in the “no fly list”, alongside suspicious types, drug smugglers, terrorists (mainly) and the like. A friend of mine, who is a professor at the Polytechnic University in Barcelona, just about every time he came to the US to attend a conference, would be taken from the airport Passport Control desk to a little room, there to be interrogated at length, with several people, that came and went, asking him probing questions, often the same ones again and again, before letting him go. Obviously, the list was not being corrected in a hurry.

But if he had been also carrying stuff in CDs or a thumb dive, that probably would not have made things any worse. Which is a consolation of sorts, maybe.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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There could be a lot of reasons for it, but none of them are sufficient or acceptable for any of the things they do.

A device that has been out of your hands under those circumstances could have had any number of things added to it. When I wrote the post about the hidden encrypted partition, I was thinking of the security of the data (since the other option presented was the cloud), but when it comes to the device itself, I don’t know that I’d trust it anymore.

If it was a PC, I could wipe the internal storage (SSD/HDD), reflash its firmware, and reflash the firmware of the PC itself, but even then I cannot be sure that anything that may have been added isn’t still there.

I’d be likely to get rid of such a device as soon as possible after that.

None of this should ever happen.

 

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OscarCP wrote:

CDs”

5inh floppies would be good too

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Wavy: You think CDs are funny? You tell that to Kathy Stevens, it’s her idea.

And I concur with her: For your information, most optical drives can read and also play CDs as well as DVDs even today.

I have on CDs the whole set of Beethoven’s symphonies, with Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra, plus a splendid quartet of soloist singers: soprano, mezzo, tenor and bass/baritone singing along with a really big chorus. For the 9th. Of course.

So, there.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
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I was being entirely serious, who is going to have a 5 floppy drive around to check. Besides us oldies. Was not obfuscation to point? Bubble memory would have been a second choice

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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We have some old PCs with floppy drives in storage but we certainly do not use them when we are traveling.

Also, excuse me, I use the terms CD and DVD interchangeably and in fact have a substantial supply of both  in our inventory.

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OscarCP

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Please disregard this post.

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First of all
I didn’t write politics or religion, at all.
Just datasecurity, plain and simple..
Recently the possibilities of the Patriot-act has been “extended” with the Earn-IT-act , Lead-act.
Both quite a new approach of security and freedom.
Susan wrote in CSOonline a comprehensible article on chainresponsibility and chainpatching policy in software handling. The same is valid for the hardware handling. Both chain-ideas pointing out that some thinking forward might had done the trick in the Solarwind “flaws”, and many others. So called “economics” and ignorance is holding people back putting effort in security.
I had the impression that here at Woody’s (in many sections) we talked about being safe and feeling safe by using a private network/cloud or the clouds offered by the big tech-data companies for datahandling and storage; Safe is here a complete different set of values, apart from the privacy issues.
Being part of a valuable and/or vulnerable environment or business or government implicates that more has to be done. Travelling with “clean” hardware and software is one thing. Not trusting one and another is the latest era since the industrialisation.

Be safe and well, and take care for the less privileged.

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Fred, all I can speak of here with even the slightest shadow of authority is my own personal experience, not a bad one as I have already described it further up. And I am going to hazard the guess that I am quite right in seriously doubting that I am such a special person that my own experience, or that of others I know that also travel often abroad and come back without problems, has to be much better than that of anybody else’s. Also the problems I have heard from others I know personally and well, for example my friend the university professor from Barcelona, are most likely due to bureaucratic snafus.

As to anything in existing laws, regulations, or directives that have to do with immigration as well as entering the USA, for whatever reason: All of that is now under some very critical and much needed review, and might have been changed a good deal before this year is out. Or it might not: too soon to tell and, consequently, also still much too soon to judge this evolving situation and come to a firm conclusion one can work into a serious discussion — or at least that is my opinion. So I am firmly determined not to let any of this worry me for several more months, at least.

Now, the if not irresistible, definitely unresisted advance of “the Cloud” and the different ways different people deal with that, is what, for my part, I fully intend to concentrate on here, because I believe I may have something to contribute to an intelligent discussion on this very timely and important topic.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
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Charlie

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Ascaris wrote:

I wouldn’t give up having grown up without any of that for anything.

I do fully agree, and am glad to be able pass on and discuss many of those feelings with the generations now raising children. And that with mutual rescpect to the others acting.

 

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bratkinson wrote:

Nor, do the under-30 crowd have much of an idea of how much of their lives are essentially public knowledge due to their heavy use of those sites!

I think you are quite right. And with my humble experience in IT Business security and Government IT-Security services it’s not hard to say that it will take a long time, still, before mankind can really handle digitalisation.

So in the mean time I stick to the traditional Italian espresso.

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OscarCP

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Fred: “And with my humble experience in IT Business security and Government IT-Security services it’s not hard to say that it will take a long time, still, before mankind can really handle digitalisation.”

Possibly so: the coming of the Internet and, more to the point here, of the Web and cellphones, are events that are having a huge and sudden impact on most people’s lives all over the world. Accommodating to it until ceases to be disruptive of the lives of many and, also as increasingly now, obstructive of reasonable, civilized coexistence, will take time, probably a much longer time that it has taken for it to happen.

With other events that brought changes as revolutionary, from the invention, first of mobile types and then of the printing press, to those, later on, of the telegraph and, later still, of the telephone and the radio and TV, things got rolled out very gradually, being adopted first for use, mainly by the Church in the case of printing, and by governments and the wealthy and by some businesses (e.g., navies and shipping lines, in the case of telegraph and radio) and then only gradually by everyone else. A further reason for the delay in mass adoption was that it took time to build the necessary infrastructure to make these things accessible to many, from setting up an effective school system for teaching most people to read and write, to have access to a telegrams’ service where one would hand over the text to be transmitted and then have those received delivered to one’s address by the local postman, to having a telephone of one’s own, or at least one in a party line, as well as publicly available ones in street booths and inside restaurants and bars. Radio and TV had somewhat faster starts, but not many could afford them until some years later. And then their use was not very frequent or prolonged, except for some business people and the stereotypical teenaged girl.

How different things are today, and how poorly are we, humans, coping with what we have created! But, more to the point: what we have created and inflicted upon ourselves — and here I am writing in general terms about the human species, not everyone around here.

But what is really the worse aspect of this, I believe, is that, being a profitable business, the delivering of “content”, both uploaded and downloaded for personal use and for general consumption, is being relentlessly flogged on humanity, along with the introduction of ever more accessible and profitable media, all leading to, and perhaps achieving, their culminating point with the coming, acceptance and ever growing (and often unnecessary and not really great, from a security point of view) adoption, of “the Cloud.”

As to my personal position on this: I refer you back to the title of this thread.

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MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
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Fred

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Well, there are many way to underline this point of view or believe. If I understood you well anough, I couldn’t agree more.

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I do not care for the cloud either but I believe if you are using the internet you are using “a” cloud of some sort or another. It never goes away. I’m fairly certain y’all have heard that before. Email and quicken(and turbotax) are about the only programs I use that require access to a backup from time to time and sadly these backups are in the ether. I was quite upset when intuit sold out and the new owners force use of the cloud (as I understand it) even though I have copies also. So unless you have a heck of a memory, or can actually write(vs type) digital is here to stay. Use it or don’t I suppose. Write it regret it, say it forget it!

PS It wont be long now that those who learned how to write in cursive will have our own secret code if we want to ‘encrypt” messages! (grin)

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NaNoNyMouse, OscarCP

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DriftyDonN: One can delete the messages backed up in the email provider’s server and keep archived copies in one’s own computer, the latter possible using, at least, some email clients.

As to the fact that browsing in a site, such as AskWoody on the Web, means browsing in someone else’s server and, by definition, doing it in “the Cloud”: true enough, but, with appropriate precautions against acquiring computer STD, and avoiding snooping and tracking, as long discussed here in AskWoody and other places, it is not the same as having one’s stuff stored somewhere in “the Cloud”. Or putting it there, even if temporarily, when working collaboratively on something. There are ways around that when doing the latter: sending and receiving stuff via encrypted messages, then deleting it from the email server, or working by remote login in one or more of the collaborator’s computers; using, when traveling, my favorite thumb drive, also CDs and DVDs, sending things over in advance, encrypted, with e.g. sftp, etc.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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DriftyDonN

We purchase the boxed version of turbotax Deluxe and install it via. a CD  – thus no need to go to Intuit to download the software.

When we open the program, we do not complete the “Keep Up To Date with Tax Law” page – we simply click the Continue button without filling in any of the requested personal information.

Then, if you go to Help and click on the Privacy Info tab you can opt-out of sending “anonymous metric data” to Intuit.

Finally, we do not file our taxes electronically and thus we do not send our personal tax information to the cloud.

In short, I am under the impression that we are not sending our turbotax tax information to the cloud.

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[NaNoNyMouse]

DriftyDonN wrote:

I do not care for the cloud either but I believe if you are using the internet you are using “a” cloud of some sort or another

Fair point. I think perhaps that for any feature you use that isn’t on your local pc, and which is stored on somebody’s servers somewhere, then it may just boil down to whether or not it self-identifies as being on the ‘Cloud’

Most assets I buy from places like Daz or the Unity Store, I install locally, but I expect them to keep backups of the item in question too, which I could download again if my version got lost for some reason (or the item got updated). They could easily say that those backups were stored in the ‘Cloud’

 

As for the secret handwritten notes, what you need to do to keep them REALLY safe, is to treat them with lemon juice (I seem to remember from my schooldays). That will render them totally invisible to anyone who doesn’t know the trick of making them visible again

(A trick which to be honest, I’ve now forgotten myself…)

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by NaNoNyMouse.

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You heat it with an iron and check after some ten seconds or so, to see if the message appears. If not, it means the paper did not get hot enough, try heating it again a longer time. Or you could use a lighter, or the a stove burner; just make sure not to burn the paper!

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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Cybertooth

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The term “cloud” itself comes from the common visual depiction of the internet as a cloud in various infographics. It’s like so many things, where there’s a widely held, loose idea of what the thing means, but no official, hard and fast definition that is common to everyone. It gets even more confused when the term becomes “cool” and advertisers start sticking it to things that they really shouldn’t, and the bounds of what it really means get more and more blurred.

At some level, “the cloud” is the internet, as defined by the infographics, but that’s not the exact definition most people seem to be using when they say “the cloud.” I suspect that if you were to ask people who use “the cloud” for things like storing their photos what the cloud actually is, you’d get a number of different definitions, or perhaps just a blank stare.

It’s no more certain from cloud services providers. Whenever you see some business consultant online extolling the virtues of the cloud, you will invariably get some curmudgeon (like me) who will say that it’s just code for “your stuff on someone else’s server.” They’ll say something like “Oh, no, it’s much more than that! It’s the reliability you get from managed redundancy, and the ability to adapt to changing workloads with great scalability!”

So if it is those extras added on top of it being “someone else’s server” that define it as the cloud, then is it really “the cloud” when a given service provider runs the server themselves, and it’s not particularly scalable and not at all redundant? There are a lot of things called “cloud” that would fit into that category… so the cloud services evangelists would perhaps say that’s not really “the cloud,” but who’s to say that it’s not? Why do some marketing people get to decide what the term means over the objections of other marketing people who want to use it differently?

 

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Cybertooth

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Marketing people like to inflict in the less informed a highfalutin sounding posy — to my nose trained to detect BS, from years of dealing with the academic world and of reviewing papers sent for publication to some technical and scientific journals — of foul-sounding adverbs, adjectives and nouns, preferably with long words. Besides “great scalability” and “managed redundancy”, how about “momentarily”, as “in the plane boarding will begin momentarily”, instead of “shortly”, or “soon”?

In contrary motion, “the Cloud” is definitely shorter than “someone else’s computer.” Go figure.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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Cybertooth

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OscarCP wrote:

just make sure not to burn the paper!

heh, yeah. still it would at least make sure that the message stayed totally secret…

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While all of the security issues raised are certainly relevant, one issue which does not appear to have been recognized is internet availability and quality. In Canada, download caps are universal. You pay a premium for unlimited data. Then, even with a premium account, many users are speed limited.

My DSL connection with Bell Canada is 10 Meg/.9 Meg. Yes, .9 meg up. Any kind of system backup is totally unrealistic, even overnight. Fibre does not exist in my city. In my part of Ontario I actually have the fastest internet availble, although Rogers does offer a 1GB/30Meg service.

My iPhone account with Telus has a 10GB/month data cap. Same issue. And before you say “Use your WiFi”, the iPhone backs up through the Bell account.

Cloud storage solutions only work in urban areas with unlimited data plans and high speed access. Otherwise the model is just not applicable. No cloud storage for me!

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Cybertooth, OscarCP

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[doriel]

Thank you for this topic. Lot have been said here, pointing out the most important observations and experiences with cloud. Seems to me that there is consensus in using cloud being very often unnescessary. There are definatelly some cases, where cloud could be usefull.
The most unwanted thing for me is, when we are forced to use cloud solutions. I mean if we are told, that cloud is more secure and awesome for everyone. That is definatelly not true. Localy stored and backed up data is still the most secure for me. No matter how hard Apple or Microsoft or Google is trying to convince me. Not mentioning, that after going to cloud, we are dependent on someone else. For sure those companies try to sell their products and services as they possibly could, convincing us, that its totally safe and they care about our data (which is actually true), but they should also mention all the downsides and risks. That is not mentioned anywhere. Its pure marketing.
We all read about services being attacked, data leaked and things like that. If we put our data on data centers and leave some open backdoors (which are always present), we would be naive not to think, that we wont be hacked one day.
I use some cloud services too, but I prefer to “stay local” for personal needs and creative work.

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• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by doriel. Reason: oh grammar

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Cybertooth

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