The downside to mass data storage in the cloud

Grazed from NetworkWorld.  Author: Tom Henderson.

The cloud can be an enormously cost-effective way to increase storage and computing musculature, and also, sadly, a way to further add misery to those seeking privacy—or who just want to be left alone. It’s rare to see organizations stand up and shout, "we’ll not give your data to anyone!" or "the life of all stored data, except opt-in assets you want us to store, is always 90 days!" or "yes, we can determine in absolute certainty that your data has been erased to protect you and your identity."

The cloud, in some warrens, has become a storage ground for the various factories of "big data," whose ideals are generally to sell things to consumers and businesses. Correlating facts is huge. Ask Target, whose insight into discovering pregnancies helped them capture a nicely profitable market in the pregnancy and new mother world. Smart, you say. There is a downside to this…

Striking while the iron is hot is a great idea. This means harvesting information on searches to be correlated into ads at the next site you visit. Facebook and Amazon are famous for this, and it’s a huge amount of Google’s total business model. Google’s purchase of Nest last year, which gleefully rats out your utility use patterns, also meant the acquisition of Dropcam…

Read more from the source @ http://www.networkworld.com/article/2889181/cloud-computing/the-downside-to-mass-data-storage-in-the-cloud.html