sj,

"I use cloud backup as a backup to my encrypted NAS backups and primary file storage... I do this for business purposes and use it for most personal storage as well."

AFAIK it's maybe more common when you have loads of data initially to send off physical drives or discs, using internet backup incrementally after.

"Our family's legal, financial and tax documents are not backed up to the cloud (17.8 MB of data). I have multiple offline storage copies which are updated from time to time. Once a year, I put a USB thumbdrive and a DVD in our bank lockbox."

Not disagreeing, an encrypted 7z file is an encrypted 7z file, no matter where it is stored. A data center with guards & protections against environmental hazzards is a far safer environment than most of us have at home or work. That said, when the amount of data is a hassle to upload, & you don't want to send it physically to a storage company, a poor man's solution can be to take out a PO Box, & mail discs [DVD or BD] to it.

"I came to the conclusion that the only reason to keep medical records private is to prevent them from being used by someone to market their “stuff” to me."

It's an indication of risk, e.g. your "heart and asthma conditions, as well as of diseases and conditions of my family" are reasons not to hire you, not to do biz with your biz, to charge you more for insurance, to charge you more for credit, to prevent you from getting clearance to work in sensitive areas etc...

" But Obamacare eliminated that. In the past, the information would also be used by employers to discriminate against you in a hiring situation. There are current laws against that as well. "

And I've got a bridge to sell ya! :) If everyone played by the rules there wouldn't be police or prisons or regs or the people who attempt to enforce them.

"Do you want your church donation records or your contributions to the NRA or the Sierra Club, or Ted Cruz or Bernie Sanders to be secure from public reach? I mean really secure! This is very expensive to do."

I'd humbly suggest cash, gift cards, pre-paid debit cards & the like, unless you're talking big money, & then you can afford to pay for ways to keep it hidden.

"I will not even try Zoolz due to its bait and switch outreach model. But, I thought the discussion was worth a comment."

I could see Zoolz being welcome &/or handy for some, but regardless, you brought up several excellant points IMHO worth talking about.

sj, another reason to keep healthcare data private: potential employers can use it to decide if you or members of your family are a high-maintenance medical liability. This could keep you from getting a job with them.

dusty1again, what happens if you loose the driveor it stops working. God forbid.

dusty1again,

"I use an external hard drive... if only you have access to it then only you can change or destroy it as needed vs someone or some program that wants to make your business their business."

An encrypted 7z file is an encrypted 7x file -- you want to make it harder, split the file into pieces stored in different places. Don't have that much data? Think of all the places you can hide microSD cards. That said, if it's worth keeping, it's worth keeping redundant copies, preferably in different places -- everything is suceptable to failure & destruction. With the spread of ransomware external, unconnected storage is ideal protection, but please consider that ransomware on your device is not necessarily going to encrypt your stuff then & there, but search for connected storage too -- if you're infected when you connect a single external drive, it's gone too. And that's besides all the other potential points of failure from only storing your stuff on one external drive.

BillyB, Thank you for posting the over-reaching terms!

Mike S.,
Mike:

I believe your purpose in this post was to make us aware of some of the terms that exist with this program. That is commendable and appreciated.

However, I do not see anything unreasonable concerning the terms as you describe them. A business, or for that matter an individual, should not be held accountable for storing a person's backup files for ever. I think that is commendable for the company to at least imply that they would use reasonable methods to notify those using their service of the company's intention to close down or cancel an individual's backup account.

sonia,
no, nothing will be replicated and saved beyond your lease period plus the usual grace time given for you to retrieve what you might have lost locally simply because the provider needs money to maintain the service.

The free storage space for a year is indeed of not much use if you do not even consider carrying on with the service.
But what the service charges actually are you can find out by going to the website of today's offer.

I too have no need for todays offer because for the same price as that company charges I have the 1TB plus a GB Microsoft OneDrive inclusive of the complete Office package.

But your replicatation forever belief is just not true.

Sigrid.DE , Sorry but, that not what the provider's terms provide. Do I think that my info. will be used/misused? No. Do the terms allow that to happen? Seemingly, yes.

Sigrid.DE ,
Sonia is correct, I used to work for a small cloud company that went belly up and yes there are at least 5 places where the customer data is stored because of safety reason, we used to subcontract different cloud company for safety storage and to backup our servers. Just imagine the night mare if our storage servers catch fire, we will be out of business overnight.

Mike S.,
your personal data, this being your name, address, bank account/credit card number and suchlike, are stored by legal obligations in the EU for a minimum time.
If in the time of active storage a court orders your files to be surrendered for examination this will be done. So, if you have data stuff of any illegal nature nobody would recommend cloud storage because it would not be the way to hide it from prosecuting/investigating services.
IP numbers are stored, files are scanned for extensions, and for sure extreme upload/download quantities (depending on the scheme chosen) are monitored.
But supposing you are just a normal citizen who wants to securely backup data on a cloud server
against a reasonably affordable charge you have nothing to fear.
No one is interested in seeing your private pics, videos, docs, pdfs your YT or wherever from videos and audios. However, if you engage in filesharing to an extent that would indicate you are doing something commercially or illegally you may come in conflict not only with certain copyright laws, but possibly, or most likely, with Zoolz' own terms.
Business in the world-wide net is very much subject to the legal requirements of the country, or in the EU, also to European legislation.

My open question to the Microsoft helpdesk before entering the contract was whether their terms would expect me to upload Office docs/data resp.would there be any objection to me using the Terabyte plus space for securing my pictures. The answer was why should they object. I pay for the service, get the Office package I want and the storage space, and they in turn provide the service.
To any business, privacy and security in transactions is the base of customer trust and loyalty.

If you live and travel in Europe you will know that certain public services have been cut down for cost reasons, and I can assure it certainly helps if you can, for instance produce a copy of your driving licence, identification card etc in the case of loss with speedy requirement for temporary papers.
Nice if you can assist by providing a copy from your cloud storage. Between waiting 3 hours or a full day or longer for replacement can make a lot of difference, in costs and inconvenience.

sonia,

"The cloud is fine for backup of audio, video, pictures and some software, but NEVER EVER for personal data, files, passwords or banking statements."

Unless you wrote it or otherwise own the rights, there are likely legal reasons you cannot, or at least should not store software in a cloud account belonging to you. Unencrypted media files, e.g. photos, are the type of files that are regularly scanned to make sure the company hosting the cloud storage is not legally libel for anything. AN encrypted file OTOH can't be opened & scanned any easier than it could on your own personal hard drive -- perhaps it might be even harder because there's no storage of the passwords or keys like might be found on your drive. And if a cloud company can't see into your encrypted file, it can't be held responsible, so there's no reason to try to scan it further.

"Free storage is just a teaser, the nagging to get more storage will never stop."

True enough -- the company won't make any money if no one buys anything, so they either must sell or die.

"There are 5 or more redundant copies of anything you send to the cloud and will replicate in some storage vaults forever,"

Almost... Drives are typically redundant, so if a drive fails, customers don't lose everything. With the big companies data centers are also redundant, and data may be shared between them for the same sorts of reasons -- so something like a hurricane or fire won't wipe every customer out -- plus when data's shared in different parts of the world, customers might get faster access when it's stored physically closer to them. As far as holding onto stuff forever, stored data may or may not be deleted when an account expires, but there's no reason to keep it when the space it takes up is needed for something else. It doesn't make economic sense. Customer records OTOH may be kept for years, or even forever -- biz legally has to hold onto such stuff for a period of time, and after that time expires, it costs them money to get rid of what they don't need. It just may not be worth it to them to pay somebody to find that stuff, then pay to have it destroyed, when it's doing no harm in their view just sitting where it is.

martin, Lol, I can just picture the endless regress... cloud server backed up to a cloud server that's backed up to another cloud server that's backed up to another cloud server that's backed up to another cloud server that's backed up to another cloud server that's backed up to another cloud server that's backed up to another cloud server ad infinitum ...

Mikik, And then, per the terms, no more access/availability, unless you've started paying . . . .

dave,
You "Trust" Google ? Well I suppose it takes all sorts. No doubt you trust Microsoft too.

dave, Google Drive (and OneDrive from MS) are great... for drag and drop. Zoolz is a backup -- meaning it automatically backs up what you want to, to their cloud. No drag and drop required. And I believe there is a mobile app too. Yeah, you will pay more for more users, but it is a lot easier to backup.

Nigel, Yes, I trust Google and Microsoft more than I trust the unknown company here . . . .

TK, I know that, but you have to keep the files not only in their original locations, but yet again in the cloud's folder(s) on your system(s). If you are going to pay Google or MS for the additional storage you will most likely need, then why duplicate the files/folders?

TK, I realize that, but you still have to take the time to copy the original files to the cloud storage location on your alternate drive. Perhaps a really good alternative to that would be to point backups (within a backup program's settings) to the cloud's storage location (still moved from the default C drive so our smaller SSD drives are not cluttered!). THAT is the best way IMO, so after I price out the costs of Zoolz and others to Google and the like, I will do that instead of copying.
I prefer a backup program that uses zip instead of proprietary methods so the files are easily accessible. I also will not be using OneDrive because of what M$ is doing to us there!

Paco Peco, Actually, my free Microsoft space is mine to keep; unlike the time-limited "offer" here.

Tom, To be honest anybody is welcome to see 99.99% of anything on my computer. What dodgy stuff is everybody obsessed with encryption and security up to?

george, the fact that you said 99.99% instead of 100% should answer it for you.

BobbyA, So the 0.01% I don't store in the cloud!

george, same here. Just make a special folder for bank statements, legal documents, medical records etc and move that to external srorage. Then no need to worry about security.

I urge all of you to look up Real Future: What Happens When You Dare Expert Hackers To Hack You (Episode 8) on youtube and watch other info videos from DefCon. If you aren't worried about security, you are plain just stupid.

jay, Was wondering about that part also. They have no clue what you put in but will terminate if they find any content that infringes on copyright laws? didn't make much sense.

jay,

Interesting... talk about hypocritical... (not you Jay... read on...)

I wanted to see if any other companies have a similar clause in their EULA's, so I just did a search on your excerpt ‘If Metadata checking (i.e. file names) reveals..."
I found many many hits, from numerous software companies and websites.
They are obviously all just copying someone else's EULA, replacing all references to the existing company name with their own company name, and then claiming the EULA as their own.

Ironic, isn't it? The EULA telling you that you are not allowed to infringe on copyrighted materials, is itself an infringement of someone else's material.

And they can't even deny they've done it or claim it's just coincidence. Because...

The excerpt you cite is always Part 4, Article c.

And the funniest part is, there's a typo, and almost all of them reproduce the typo.
The sentence is cut-off at the same point:

"(c) If Metadata checking (i.e. file names) reveals that an account has content relating to video piracy, software piracy or any copyrighted data with the intent to distribute (i.e. torrents)"

The words "the account will be immediately terminated." is missing from all of them.

(Which also means they can't point at their EULA and say it gives them the right to terminate. But that's a separate issue.)

And it all kinda makes you wonder who was the original author of that EULA.

Cheers

Its probably the trackpad that is causing you woes. Can you use a USB mouse as a temporary solution?
How much memory have you got? If 32bit, I would suspect 2 or possibly 4. More memory and definetely an SSD instead of a normal HDD would give your laptop a new lease of life.

Tranmontane,
Sounds like maybe your mouse is faulty?

Tranmontane,

You have a hardware problem. Add Win10 and you have both a hardware and software problem.

Tranmontane,
Could be keyboard as well, hopefully just something like crumbs stuck in it (hold it upside down and tap, you'll find all sorts of detritus come out). Maybe even crumbs in the edges of the trackpad.

I had somewhat similar problems, was going to install a new OS like you despite a knowledgeable person telling me it sounded like hardware. Turns out it was my monitor's USB extension ports were weakening, which were housing my wireless keyboard and mouse receiver. The solution was to replace the monitor's bad capacitors. Who'da thunk it?

So yes, listen when they're saying it sounds like hardware.

black5, I couldn't agree with you more. I use a heavily encrypted NAS drive to store my personal files on. Using a cloud is just asking for trouble.

Lenny, that's a good thought, but what about a house fire, tornado, etc., that zaps both your hard drive and your backup? That is the one feature of a cloud drive that's hard to beat. It should be there regardless of almost any disaster.

dan6807, I would be careful with this. Adrive.com offered the same deal for years. Suddenly one day it changed. We were given the choice to subscribe or start downloading our data. Not thay Megasync will do this but it is something to keep in mind.

Niko,

Simply you have to buy a subscription....

Mario,

Thanks. I knew that. I just wanted to clarify some stuff so I chatted online with their Customer Service and she told me that all files will be deleted if one opts not to renew. A "grace period" of 3 months is given after the license expires. However, one cannot access the files during that period unless one pays the subscription.

John Marsh, Sorry, posted before finishing comment about Dropbox. Admin - please delete and I will re-post