Would you agree to leave a copy of your mail at the post office? If not, then why would you leave copies of your digital files on someone else’s server?
If you choose to upload your files somewhere, do consider the following issues:
- What are the privacy and security policies? How is your data protected? Who has access to the servers?
- What is the backup and failover policy? How soon will the servers brought up? Where are the backups kept? Who has access to the backups?
- What to do if someone hacks into the system and obtains your files?
- Is there data mining on your files? Are you suddenly getting lots of spam? Are you surprised that you uploaded pictures of Vegas trip on this photo sharing site and you start getting spam about tours and travels?
- When you delete files on the servers, what happens to the backups? Are they actually deleted or virtually deleted?
Lot of these issues can be addressed by private and direct file sharing. With direct file sharing, the files are transferred directly between two computers. So, a) Its very hard to intercept and mine your data [but not impossible] and b) there are only two copies; one which was sent and one which was received.
Binfer addresses these issues with its direct file transfer technology. When files are shared, Binfer routes the files directly to the recipient’s computer. No copies are kept anywhere on the network.