Have you seen the headlines lately? Hacking and surveillance are bigger news than the next iPhone. Yet companies like Google, Apple and Dropbox have been urging us to load all our photos, and sometimes even more precious documents, in an online vault called the cloud. It’s actually huge racks of servers, in locations all over the world.

What could possibly go wrong with hundreds of millions of people storing personal data in a centralized warehouse?

In August, Dropbox reset the passwords for 68 million accounts in response to a 2012 breach. Anyone with an email address is at perpetual war with phishers, who were behind a big celebrity photo iCloud leak in 2014. Is anything safe from hackers?

A lesser-known cloud alternative is gaining traction: Store stuff on a hard drive at home, but access it online from anywhere. Known as “personal cloud” storage, some products from Western Digital and Seagate use your own internet connection and are known only to you and the drive maker, so your files are less of a honeypot for hackers. You can get gobs of space for under $200—and no monthly fees. Two newcomers I’ve also been testing, Lima Ultra and Apollo, are even simpler and work more like Dropbox.

Yet a private cloud has problems, too: Without 24/7 security from Google or Apple, you are solely responsible for keeping hackers out. And you have to keep that drive from failing, or risk losing important data.

I asked hackers and security pros where they store their most precious documents—tax files—and got different answers from nearly all of them. Some said they would trust the public cloud, while others said they would keep files far away from the internet (making them difficult to share with an accountant). “There is no really perfect advice right now,” said Matthew Green, a cryptographer and professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute.

Security and privacy involve choices we all need to make for ourselves—and are worth at least as much consideration as the color of your phone. If that sounds like too much work, I’ve prepared a study guide

Pro: For reliable access to your stuff from any connected device, it’s hard to beat the convenience of the largest cloud services. Dropbox, which charges $100 to store a terabyte of data for one year, perfected the magically-in-sync folder of stuff. Google and Apple offer the hands-down easiest way to manage photos and videos, shifting them off your phone or laptop before out-of-space alerts pop up.

These services make compelling arguments that they are best prepared to fight hackers. They not only encrypt our data on their servers, but also constantly look for suspicious patterns, scanning the dark web for chatter and even paying hackers to identify vulnerabilities. Case in point: Dropbox says it thinks users lost no data from the 2012 hack because of the way it stored passwords. Security is “about long-term protection against constantly evolving threats,” said Mark Crosbie, the company’s head of trust and security.

Con: The public cloud turns you into a perpetual renter, where you get hooked into a service that could cost you more than a drive within two years. It doesn’t happen often, but cloud services can also go down temporarily.

The public cloud is scariest for people concerned about privacy and the threat of government surveillance. Your personal data is out of your own control. Apple promises not to examine your data, while Google paints analyzing and sorting your photos as a selling point. But because they hold keys to decrypt at least some of your files, they can—and do—hand over data when compelled by a court order. (The most responsible, like Google, Apple and Dropbox, report how often it happens.) Who knows what could happen if laws change?

How to be safer: Way too many of us leave our stuff at risk in the cloud by re-using passwords and not turning on an extra layer of security called two-factor authentication (a.k.a. 2FA, two-step verification, or login approval). Once you turn it on in cloud settings, it typically sends you a secondary passcode via text message or app. It isn’t foolproof, but it could keep a hacker out of your stuff if they get your password.

For supersensitive files like tax documents, consider encrypting them with a separate password before storing them in the cloud. On a Mac, use FileVault in the Disk Utility; on a Windows PC, use Microsoft BitLocker.

Personal cloud drives might cost more up front, but with no monthly fees, you could even save money. My favorite, Promise Technology’s Apollo, comes with 4TB for $300. The $130 Lima attaches to a USB drive you may already own. Many let you share storage with family or colleagues, who all get their own logins and space. They can also back up the photos on your phone over Wi-Fi.

Con: So you want to be in the server business? While all four of the private cloud devices I tested were easy to set up, it’s on you to keep them running. If your home Internet or power goes out, you lose access to your stuff. And you have to trust these companies to keep updating software to address new threats.

While they are improving in simplicity, none is as simple as Dropbox or as tightly integrated as Apple’s iCloud. When you need to get data off them, you may be limited by the upload speed of your internet connection, which is often much slower than the download speed.

How to be safer: A personal cloud, like any other connected device in the house, is at risk if you don’t secure your home Wi-Fi with a password and keep your router software up to date.

And beware: Hard drives often fail at the worst possible moments. Apollo and Lima have a solution, but it’ll cost you: If you buy a second unit, you can keep a copy of your drive—constantly updated over the internet—in a different location in case of theft, fire or failure.

Corrections & Amplifications 
 Mark Crosbie is the head of trust and security at Dropbox. An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled his surname as Crosby. (March 14)

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-your-stuff-safe-in-the-cloud-1489510350

Regular Verb(Bold)

Irregular Verb (Underline)

• Seen
• Been

• Apple and Dropbox have been urging us to load all our photos
• And you have to keep that drive from failing
• (making them difficult to share with an accountant)
• Security and privacy involve choices we all need to make for ourselves—and are worth at least as much consideration as the color of your phone.
• it’s hard to beat the convenience of the largest cloud services.
• Dropbox, which charges $100 to store a terabyte of data for one year
• Google and Apple offer the hands-down easiest way to manage photos and videos
• These services make compelling arguments that they are best prepared to fight hackers.
• but also constantly look for suspicious patterns, scanning the dark web for chatter and even paying hackers to identify vulnerabilities.
• Apple promises not to examine your data

• hundreds of millions of people storing personal data in a centralized warehouse
• A lesser-known cloud alternative is gaining traction
• Google paints analyzing and sorting your photos as a selling point.
• While they are improving in simplicity

• they hold keys to decrypt at least some of your files
• Way too many of us leave our stuff at risk in the cloud by re-using passwords 

• I asked hackers and security pros where they store their most precious documents
• I’ve prepared a study guide
• The public cloud is scariest for people concerned about privacy 
• Hackers motivated by money 
• I tested were easy to set up

• they would trust the public cloud
• it’ll cost you