Blog Post 5 - Is the Cloud Safe?

 

C. Marcellus Griffin - Blogpost 5-  The Cloud

When I tell you that I have a million electronic Usernames and Password, I'm afraid it is not an exaggeration.  However, because a friend recently suggested that I use "the cloud" to store all of my passwords, I have been weighing the pros and the cons for the past few days.

For years, I have struggled with finding ways to manage my passwords:
I have tried to keep the same passwords for various accounts. This didn't work, because some accounts require alpha numeric passwords, and other do not, or, some accounts require passwords that are much longer than others.  When this didn't work, I recorded all of my passwords onto one calendar.  This actually worked, until the new year began, and I was faced with having to transcribe all of the passwords onto another calendar, or not.  I chose "not".

Finally, this year, I thought I  had stumbled upon the God-sent answer to my password woes, when one of my friends showed me some of his vacation pictures that were in "the cloud"- The Cloud.

"cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive. The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet. It goes back to the days of flowcharts and presentations that would represent the gigantic server-farm infrastructure of the Internet as nothing but a puffy, white cumulonimbus cloud, accepting connections and doling out information as it floats. " (PCMag.com)


At the time that he showed me, he prefaced the conversation by saying, it's not necessary for me to keep the pictures in my phone because they are in the cloud.  He then logged onto his compute, and, within minutes, I was viewing his vacation pictures.

The cloud would allow me to store all of my passwords in a virtual location, which means the only password I would really need to keep handy is the password to The Cloud.  The thought excited me until I conversed with my wife about it.  She believes that all of our passwords are much safer on paper, located in our home than they are if they are located in a virtual location.  As she stated, "I don't know who has access to that [Cloud] information!"


I chewed on that thought while conducting internet research and discovered that Steve Wozniack shares my wife's concern.  He was recently quoted as saying,  "I really worry about everything going to the cloud... I think it's going to horrendous.  I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years."

After reading this article, I decided my wife was right again.  Therefore, I'll be purchasing another calendar tomorrow when I accompany her on her daily visit to Walmart .

C. Marcellus Griffin