Dear Millennials, how well do you know your cloud?

The Man in the Cloud

“The Cloud” is an on-running joke in television and movies of late. When a homemade sex tape in Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz’s comedy, “Sex Tape” starts synching to their friends’ iPads via the cloud, Segel realizes the mistake and says, “Nobody understands the cloud, it’s a fucking mystery!”

It’s true. Most people don’t understand the cloud.

What is it? Where is it? Is it something we can see, or just something we feel in our hearts… after all, “the cloud” sounds cute and cuddly!

Whatever “the cloud” is, we can’t argue with cloud storage as a convenient, practical, and damn near essential fixture in our daily life. With the proliferation of smartphones, iPads, tablets, laptops, computers for home and work — the days where we stored all of our important documents and files on our computer’s hard drive are long gone. The old way of doing things just plain doesn’t make sense anymore. And so, we all bow down to “The Cloud.” We upload our documents, photos, music, and important files — all offerings to that blessed digital cumulous in the sky.

But even with all of the advantages, most of us have a few mistrusting bones in our body. Shame on us, right? After all the cloud has done for us… The simple drag and drop interface and assurance that our files are stored in one centralized, protected location is so convenient. And it’s free? How considerate!

Remember the days when we used to email ourselves important files to be downloaded on another device later? Yeah, that was really cumbersome. We don’t want to go there again. So we trustingly “agree” to the terms and conditions on data privacy and security when signing up with free cloud service providers, thinking, “It must be safe, right?”

Trading Privacy for Convenience

It’s not just cloud storage services that we often think twice about in the Digital Age. We’re constantly ceding our personal information, our likes and dislikes, friends, lovers, and enemies, our thoughts and passions… OUR LIFE to social media networks, storage services, and all of the gadgets that fall under the umbrella of “The Internet of Things.” Do these companies care about us? Does Mark Zuckerberg care about you or your data? Are we trading our privacy for convenience?

Do Social Media Sites Own our Content?

One in five people on the planet are on Facebook. We presume that at least for 999 million of you, when you first opened your Facebook account, your priority was selecting the perfect picture to represent your profile page and NOT reading Facebook’s privacy and data agreement. At over 14,000 words long, who would read that?

So here it is in a nutshell: does Facebook own all of your content? No, well… Not really.

According to the agreement you digitally signed (but likely didn’t read, and if you did read it, you likely didn’t have a lawyer sitting nearby to explain it to you into legalese); Facebook members own all of their content and information that they post on Facebook. Members also control how it’s shared through their privacy and application settings. For example, members can decide whether their content is “public” or “private” i.e shown to friends within their personal profile page or made public to all, even those without a Facebook account. When you post content on Facebook — which is covered by Intellectual Property rights (photos, videos) — you’re granting Zuckerberg et.al a “worldwide license” to use any of your intellectual content.

What does that mean? It’s what you think it means…

Facebook can use YOUR CONTENT and monetize it through advertising campaigns, and however else they wish. However, this open license agreement terminates once you close your Facebook account. Sounds fair? Mmmm… not really.

Deleting your profile does not necessarily mean you will delete your Intellectual Property from Facebook. Here’s the caveat, per the terms: “when you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time.”

What does that mean? What is a “reasonable period of time?” It means that Facebook’s license to use your content does not terminate when you deactivate your account. Consider all of the other users that still have accounts on Facebook, your friends and fans who have shared or tagged your pictures and videos. Until all of these members part ways with Facebook as well, your content can still be used however Facebook deems fit. Yikes, right?

Facebook is undoubtedly the Rock of Gibraltar when it comes to social media. So do the other social networking sites enjoy similar rights? You bet!

Twitter states in its terms of service that a member’s Intellectual Property is still their own, however — Twitter enjoys “a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license with the right to sublicense.” In other words, your content is also Twitter’s content. By posting pictures and other intellectual property, you are telling Twitter, “yeah, okay… you can do anything you want with my content. Modify it, sub-license it, use it, transmit it… Whatevuh.”

Essentially, social networking sites are all the same. You still own your content, but you’re granting the company the non-exclusive right to use and monetize your content, as well as sell it to third parties, however they see fit.

Circling Back to Cloud Storage Services…

Getting back to free storage services like Dropbox, what do they get out of storing your content exactly? Is the cloud really just this benevolent entity that functions like a storage unit for your digital stuff?

Dropbox’s tag line is to “simplify your life.” It certainly does that. As well, Dropbox is very vocal about how they have limited use of your data: “solely to provide the services… no matter how the services change, we won’t share your content with others.”

However, read their privacy document — another novella — and you come to find that Dropbox has the right to share a user’s data with “trusted third parties” if doing so “extends the value of the existing services.” While this may not sound as carte blanche as the social networks, Dropbox and other cloud service providers give themselves plenty of wiggle room.

Is Keeping your Data Safe and Private on Cloud Services Possible?

When it comes to cloud storage solutions, we often only consider two ways of keeping our data safe: passwords and encryption.

• Passwords. We all know that passwords are always vulnerable to being hacked. That’s why we come up with Rubik’s cube-esque passwords, right? None of that “12345” stuff. We are also sure to change up our passwords often. Understanding this minimizes the risk of our passwords being hacked and the data on the cloud compromised.
• Encryption. Most data storage providers encrypt data while it’s traveling from our devices to the cloud. This makes data safe from hackers reading or capturing data.

But once your data is safely couriered to cloud storage heaven, is it safe? Is that where the privacy story ends? That’s where a few other questions come into play:

• Is your data stored in a private location or jumbled up with other user’s data?
• What about backups? Do you, the client, have ownership over the backup data or does the service producer own it?
• Even if you use a private cloud, what happens when your data is transferred to a new system or backup storage?

Aside from hackers and service providers eyeballing your data, the US government may do so as well. Federal and local governments may at anytime serve a subpoena to a storage service provider, requiring them to open members’ data for government examination and possible seizure.

Blowing Away the Cloud

Many people are willing to trade privacy for convenience. They figure they have nothing to hide — and can’t imagine any of their content being utilized by marketers. Others are a bit more cautious or skeptical of social networks and cloud service providers.

A proliferation of startups are offering ways the individual can access their personal files across all their devices with complete privacy. The increasing number of tech users in Korea have started using personalized indexing apps such as KonanLink. These sorts of apps let users index the content on all of their devices, and access it remotely, making cloud services redundant.

Similar apps are likely to gain traction as privacy laws are changing overseas. For example, the 28-member states that make up the European Union have approved data protection regulations, providing European citizens more control over how their digital information is collected and managed. The regulations seek to equalize the playing field; touting a citizen’s privacy rights is akin to freedom of expression.

Is it Really Free?

Whether we realize it or not, dozens of times each day we are making a decision — choosing privacy over convenience or convenience over privacy. Are we too quick to embrace new technology, without weighing the true cost?

Consider this thought experiment: would you print out your photos, stick them in an envelope, and then place them in a public park — where you (as well as others) can remotely access them from your smartphone, tablet, or laptop? If that feels a tad weird, remind yourself that this is precisely what you do each and every day you post a photo on a social network or upload files to cloud services such as iCloud, Dropbox, or Evernote.

And what about free email services? Everyone now has had the experience of reading an email in Gmail or Yahoo, only to realize that the ad they’re being served is a direct spin-off of the content in the email messages you’ve composed. You have to remind yourself that you’re using a free service, so the convenience is great and all — but on some level, it feels like Mr. Google is looking over your shoulder as you write that email, and using it to determine what advertisements to serve you.

At times, this can be downright frustrating. Especially during the Holidays and you’re doing online research, shopping for presents. I share a computer with my spouse, and was annoyed to discover the ads we were served gave a big clue into what gift ideas I was mulling over. Thanks for ruining my surprise gift, Google! Geesh!

Is it Getting Cloudy?

Some of us think it’s cloudy, others don’t. As always there are two camps.

In the first camp, folks opt for the convenience cloud storage providers offer and the entertainment value of social networks. These campers have no qualms volunteering their personal information several times each day. Some of these campers even own startups or established businesses; it’s a faced-paced world, old-fashioned security measures may simply slow daily life down.

And then there are those in the other camp. This camp is less modern, sure. But that’s fine because these campers opt for privacy and security. They like it this way. Maybe some things are better old school. Paper, pencils, letters, phone calls… getting up out of your desk and actually speaking with your colleague instead of emailing them…

Clearly there are tradeoffs for both campers. The important thing here is awareness. Next time you see a “terms of agreement” pop up asking you to sign another novella-sized form, think about what you’re willing to give up. Or when you’re posting to a social network, consider what photos or videos you wouldn’t mind sharing — not only with friends — but strangers, marketers, and governments as well. There are a lot of Peeping Tom advertisers out there; fortunately the final decision of whether they will get a glimpse of you, is entirely up to you.