@zak89:
> But does anyone honestly believe that their home network is more secure
> than Google?
Definitly. I know, google has no access to my data. You cannot say that if it's stored at google. Do you know Google? Anything about it's intents? About the next 20 years? Who has access to your data, besides you?

> If your not a HR advocate or secret agent, do we really need to worry
> about malignent regimes geting access to the subject lines of email sent
> to coworkers and friends?
Yes, you definitly should care. Maybe you do not get killed in your country for what you think, but there are others countries. Most likely it's not so sunny in your country if you dig a bit deeper.

The company I'm working with has lost ~ 100 million euro thanks to NSA sellig emails. You definitly rethink your position after such an event.

I have at the moment 2 notebooks and a desktop in use for work, 8 ARM-based devices and 12 netbooks for "appliance" like applications. It's kept in sync with SSH and works flawless. Anyway, my precious date is in my head, not on my hardrive.

It's nice for the user to use google cloud, but there are most likely others that like the idea even more.

zak89 wrote:

2handband wrote:... So if I can't access my server from my mom's house because my ISP is playing pocket pool instead of keeping the network running like they're supposed to, it's just not a very big deal to me.

Well, I'm not sure the rest of us can say that very easily... I keep a lot of important stuff on my home server.

So do I... but I'm not gonna die if I can't access it right here, right now when I'm not at home.

@samhain: You took the words right out of my mouth, bro. Anyone who trusts their government or a big corp like Google is nuts. I like it on my server, behind my firewall, and only accessible using my login.

I trust Google, at least on an organizational level, not to do anything intentionally malicious with my data. But there are individuals who work for the company who definitely have access to my data and might do something malicious on their own. Then there's the possibility of Google unintentionally doing something malicious or just being stupid. For example, releasing "anonymized" data for academic research which can very easily be linked back to specific people. So I don't at all trust that my data on Google's servers isn't being accessed by Google employees or even shared with the public.

But I still use Google's services because I don't really care about my email being private. I don't set up meetings at hotels with 13 year olds or email about company secrets or my plans to blow up the Washington monument. All someone could learn from my email would be things like where I live, where I work, when I'm not home, etc. Yes, this knowledge can be harmful, but a malicious person could learn these things even without access to my email.

I guess I'm basically making a choice to take on some risk in exchange for a service I find extremely convenient. I can understand why people might choose differently.

Whoah whoah whoah, I'm not trusting Google with the overly important stuff, like what my PIN is (chip and PIN system here). But I DO use Gmail, which is very useful (sorry KMail guys!), I DO use Google Personailized search; I've got 5 years of search history with them (yes, that includes pRon) which means all I need to do is enter my search terms and the result I'm looking for is the first one up there.

I also use local search, so they know where I live, but this means I can get access to services around me quicker.

and Google Checkout, as well.


So, do I trust them? Of course. Though you won't find me putting up my files on Google Docs, because whilst I'm sure they'll try and take good card of it, I'd rather sit here with my computer and backup harddrive.