I live in the Clouds, the fact you are reading this is it’s on a server somewhere! And for the usual things I am quite ok with that. My e-mail syncs over the different devices I use. In other words I am a bit of a geek and I like that! I use Mac but I am Windows friendly, I just want it to work; and work well!
Like many people I have had many e-mail accounts in my time, some connected with work and some connected to the provider I was using to access the web. A few weeks ago I was made aware that my brother had received a couple of very weird e-mails from an old windows account. My fault for not thinking about it but it took quite a few attempts to access the account. And although the e-mail account for reset was itself old, my phone number was the same and I was eventually able to access the account and make it my own again.
I did try the first time to contact hotmail/Microsoft and see what help I could get. Turns out that all you can get is resetting the account over the internet. If anything worse was too happen you would be left high and dry. You see all the tech response persons I talked to were in India, and they really didn’t know anything other than fixing my windows machine. It’s like I have gone back ten years and my registry is messed up, or I am missing drivers. I haven’t had to deal with this in years. I am on a mac now so I really don’t have software issues, (hey it’s a fact)! And the other reason is even on my clunky underpowered windows netbook, I haven’t had those issues; XP is quite a stable OS!
So it was with exasperation I started to think of cloud computing, and how it will be if I trust my all to the cloud. What kind of a response can I expect from the company I trust my all to? Microsoft is clearly still in the 90’s, and is still fixing registry errors.
Apple will be venturing even more with the new data forest that’s being brought online soon. I have been with Mobile Me for a number of years, originally it wasn’t that great, and the upgrades were painful. But it works well now, and I hear there will be a big change this year. Another reference to the data forest being built.
Google seems to be better equipped with a form you can fill out and give more pertinent information. Then a person can get back to you and fix your issue. Within 24 hours I have been told, and sometimes faster. This may not be perfect if my all is in the cloud and the rain has come; but it is on the right path.
I say to any and all, only put up things on the web that you would like to share, because with all the privacy settings in the world things can go wrong. And when you agreed to the terms of service to use the site I am sure the lawyers were protecting the company, not the user.
I have not checked other sites to see how they handle hacked account issues, it is up to the user to find out if the company you give your data to is looking after your info securely. And if the unthinkable does happen, I hope the company has a system in place to get you back quickly. I mean it is your digital life we are talking about isn’t it!
