[andybak]

For the uses I have in mind they can pretty much do what they want with my data - including lose it without warning or send it the NSA.

But yes - not everyone is going to approach this with their eyes open.

As in all things there's a tradeoff. I am perfectly happy with the tradeoff Gmail offers me as long as I am kept informed and I'm happy with the tradeoff here - which is that I don't assume anything as I've never heard of the company.

So - I'm going to upload a huge directory of stuff that isn't personal and is already safely backed up. In return I get web access to it without paying a penny - and a 'sort-of' backup.

[freehunter]

Likewise, the biggest use I have for things like Dropbox or potentially Hive is to store my personal collection of guitar tabs that I've curated, so wherever I go I can still practice without having to remember to bring my tabs. I also keep a collection of educational PDFs and ebooks as well as some pictures I found on the Internet that I decided to keep for one reason or another in case I need to link to them on Reddit or send a funny gif to a friend. In college, I would put my notes there as well as homework assignments or group projects that I need to share with classmates. Hell, I don't even care if any of that were to be released to the public, let alone if the NSA or private companies are snooping on it.

Then again, I'm fully aware of the dangers of cloud solutions. Others are not. And that's the problem.

[msluyter]

Yeah, this is what I was thinking. Though I do have backups of my photos/music, in a worse case scenario in which all my drives were lost/stolen/eaten simultaneously I would lose everything. (This would be unlikely, because one is stored in a safety deposit box.) But a service like this would allow for one extra layer of redundancy with minimal downsides.

Create a giant tar.gz file, encrypt it, and store the encrypted file.