Tag Open Source
How to Pick Privacy-friendly Services
The topic of privacy came up today in a conversation about picking a cloud storage for documents like journals and other writing. Given the fact that services can recognise handwriting, where is a good place to store your notes?
The larger question was, how do you pick privacy-friendly services?
Let us start simple: Google owns Google Drive, Microsoft owns Microsoft OneDrive. They are both into advertising, though Microsoft is not as aggressive as Google is. Dropbox is solely a cloud storage company, with no known ties with the advertising world. Dropbox scores better here. Despite Dropbox’s security issues, Dropbox Security Bug Made Passwords Optional For Four Hours (TechCrunch) I have found it reliable. The drawback is that you start with a meagre 2 GB of storage. Sure, if you plan to store text documents and not much more, 2 GB is not bad; if you plan to store scanned documents, pictures, etc., you must look elsewhere.
Privacy and You
Online privacy is like civilisation. It takes time, but when it happens, it happens. The process is slow and arduous. While we do not push ourselves to such drastic changes, some events do push us. One such was that of Facebook deciding to force WhatsApp users to allow sharing data between WhatsApp and Facebook.