Is someone gonna jack the Amazon .com building with ski masks on and physically steal or damage the machines that our data is stored on?
Is someone gonna bust the encryption and hack in via software?
whoa, hell no! you got me totally wrong. my concerns is not about anybody stealing data from Amazons's servers. It's about Amazon itself. It would be about almost every company. There are very few companies who "sell" real data safety. For example, there are some which sell automatic backup systems. You have then an extern hard drive, where the software puts a backup on every day. Along with that, you get some gigs online, so you have a second backup on their servers. The company itself is all about safety and trustworthy, it's their only reason of existence, so to say.
But Amazon and all these fishy companies giving you a crapload of free things on advertise base, i don't trust them. In german there is a nice word for them, like Google they are "Datenkraken", which means like an octopus with eight arms they try to find out everything about you. All your surfing history, all your cookies, every item you looked at in an online shop, what did you write in forums, what do your read, watch, say, BUY, need, want...
They don't give you all this pretty shiny things just because they are so fine people. They want to make money, and the best way to achieve this nowadays is to gather as much data as possible, and turn it into user profiles.
But, besides, this may be normal to a certain point. And a lot of us accept it to get all this free services. That's totally okay. But there are other things to enter into the equation. Like this terrorism crap. It's not about terrorists stealing data. It's about american efforts to get to know everything about everybody so they can find their bombers. gosh. right now they are struggling to keep access to all the bank data of all european citizens. like mine. they already have the access because the SWIFT servers are in the USA, now moving to Europe.
if there is the slightest suspicion about somebody, they check everything. What arouses suspicion? Buying a book about Islam and one about electrical engineering on Amazon, for instance. Can you guess what comes next? Besides checking your personal, business and financial background they ask Amazon for access to your super free online account, and will get it. There is not much private, if it's on the internet.
There are a lot of cases showing how it's going just like that. This is not fiction. In Germany lives a man, his life sucks very much just because of this. His only fault were to write the word "Precarity" (like in precarious work) and some other buzzwords too often in his publications. He is a sociologist and the words are normal terms in his job. Along with some political engagement this brought the Federal Criminal Office to scene, who observed him for ONE YEAR. There were cameras attached to neighbourhood houses to watch his door, for getting to know when he comes and leaves, alone or with other persons. They checked his private background and his friends and his work. They asked his money institute if they could see his cash movements. And just because they ASKED, the institute quit his contract. The man didn't know it, but he had no privacy anymore. They wiretapped his telephone, read his mails and watched who he was meeting. For one entire year. Because he used some sensitive words innocently. It all came out some day, and his life was destroyed. His name is Andrej Holm, please google him for yourself.
Ok, ok, calm down now. I know this is totally not what you expected to hear now. It sounds very fantastic and freaky, like from a paranoid. I just wanted to say things are definitely not easy anymore. I didn't want to say the government will come for you and read all your private things just because you use online storage services. I justed wanted to say, be careful, think twice about everything anybody wants to give you for free on the web. Look from who it's coming, and what rewards they have from giving it to you.