Backup in the cloud?

[thewolfe]

I automatically backup up all my data on a slave drive on my computer every couple of hours and also backup to an external "G"drive every couple of months.

I've been thinking about Carbonite for an offsite backup.

But....I'm always concerned about putting my "stuff" out there and then having the site hacked.

And was also thinking about encrypting the data before it got uploaded to the "cloud".

If that would make sense, what encryption software could I use.

And regarding encryption, I'm always concerned about encrypting and not being able to un-encrypt it.

What say you guys?

[Krom]

Standard business practice with cloud providers is to encrypt all data stored on their servers to the extent that they cannot decrypt it themselves, only you can decrypt it because only you have the necessary private key. Typically the data is encrypted by the backup application on your PC before it is even sent to them, so they never even see the unencrypted set which only exists on your computer. Although currently there are no guarantees the NSA couldn't decrypt it if they wanted.

If you lose your key or password or whatever, then yeah you wouldn't be able to decrypt your stuff anymore and it would be lost, so don't.