Online back up & software

robt_2

matthew_richard_harman wrote: »

How secure is your data once on the site from internal staff? I know the sites have good security whilst transferring and also the providers talk about their strong firewalls etc but I haven't seen much about the whether the data is encrypted on the servers. I have paranoid visions of that bored network admin bloke surfing my uploaded pictures of my family. This is a very generalised comment, and I know that al of the providers are going to have very professional staff, however as with all parts of life, there are always the odd one or two you wouldn't necessarily trust.
Am I overly concerned?

That is something you would again have to ask them because they do not state what security they use. I would bet that they do encrypt data, but don't state how because they are trying to keep things as simple as possible for the average PC world customer (I'm not saying you are one!).

Personally I use CrashPlan+ their security details are HERE. There is an overview of Carbonite's policy HERE.

arrallas

My wife swears by Carbonite - it has got her out of many jams over the years. The beauty is its simplicity. As has been said before, it will take forever to initially back up that quantity of data, but then it just works in the background until you need it. You can try it free for a couple of weeks and if you like it, using one of Leo Laporte's offer codes from his podcast will give you a couple of months free. Use TWIP (or possibly also TWIT, Windows) as the code (these are abbreviations for shows in his podcast network!) There is no limit on the data you backup from your internal drives, so no external drives, NAS etc.

robt_2

Carbonite is no good- it DOES throttle (severely) and the person asking the question has a lot to upload. It would take years.

matthew_richard_harman

robt wrote: »

That is something you would again have to ask them because they do not state what security they use. I would bet that they do encrypt data, but don't state how because they are trying to keep things as simple as possible for the average PC world customer (I'm not saying you are one!).

Personally I use CrashPlan+ their security details are HERE. There is an overview of Carbonite's policy HERE.

Thanks for the links, So the data on these sites is very secure. But then it adds another variable to the mix :-) It looks like the data is stored in the US which I guess would be subject to their laws rather than ours (Guess that's something else for me to look at!)

I can underderstand that PC World has a lot of cutomers that aren't interested in the detail.

As I've seen it's livedrive who provide the solution to PC world I've sent an email to them asking them to explain their server security levels. Guess it'll be a good test of their Customer Service!

I see what people mean about the throttling on Carbonite. It looks like it drops to 100Kbps max speed after 200GB of data If my maths is right then the maximum data I'll get up is 1GB per day!

OneWickedSon

I've been reselling Livedrive to my clients for about a year. (We don't rebrand it, or anything)

It works fine; is intuitive and secure enough for us. Looking at that console, however, none of them are over 50gb. (Though each account is unlimited). Not sure about throttling.

matthew_richard_harman

OneWickedSon wrote: »

I've been reselling Livedrive to my clients for about a year. (We don't rebrand it, or anything)

It works fine; is intuitive and secure enough for us. Looking at that console, however, none of them are over 50gb. (Though each account is unlimited). Not sure about throttling.

Don't suppose you know if they encrypt on disk as well as during the transfer? I couldn't see anything on their website.

thanks

OneWickedSon

I've had a look at the setup on my PC. (I use it to backup my family pictures...)

I don't see anything that does this on the disc side.

BulldogBackup

I have removed my previous post as on reflection it may have been mistaken for spam.

At least I was honest by stating who I was rather than posting a message from say a 'satisfied customer' or the likes!

Anyway apologies if my attempt to promote an offer has caused anyone and in particular 'robt' offence.

I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me

Douglas Fisher
Bulldog Backup Limited

robt_2

Bye Bye spammer.

matthew_richard_harman

matthew_richard_harman wrote: »

Don't suppose you know if they encrypt on disk as well as during the transfer? I couldn't see anything on their website.

thanks

In case anyone else is interested livedrive responded to my email (just over 48hrs later).
"Thank you for contacting Livedrive Support.

The data that is stored within our data centre is encrypted with AES-256 US military grade encryption"

Certainly sounds impressive.