Where is my stuff?

Wired’s Bruce Schneier talks about the consquences of the internet being your hard drive.

Mainly he is discussing the idea of relying on third party services for keeping the information you want to keep accessible and the downsides and dangers of relying on other people for what you think is important.

I recently heard someone who had stored many pictures on Flickr without any additional backup had their account hacked into and all of the pictures deleted. This was a paid account, mind you, not a free one. They requested assistance and received, well, nothing. “Sorry, that’s not our problem.” i.e. Flickr has no back up at all. If you get hacked and your stuff deleted you don’t have recourse. Such are the vagaries of cheap and unlimited storage. To Flickr, as well as Google I am sure, the only things backed up are critical systems and the date on those systems. You may be part of the great experiment, but you aren’t critical until there are millions of you and it’s happening all at one time. In this case, it is the opposite of the old saying. One person is a statistic, a million people is a tragedy.