The Cloud Is a Lie

The cloud is a lie.  And if you believe in it, you’re not only a sucker, you’ve been brainwashed into accepting your lot as a 2nd class digital citizen.

The cloud is a lie because it convinces you of at least two Stockholm syndrome things: (1) you don’t deserve to own or control your own data, and (2) security for your data does not matter.

In support of this, here is a small portion of the many now defunct cloud services that have left their users holding their collective…um…frustrations.

A Partial List of Defunct Cloud Services

Cloud Service	Notes
Music
Apple Ping	Not sure you lost much when Ping was shut down, as it was more a baby music related social network. However, it shows that even mighty Apple can and has turned the “off” switch to its cloud services
Microsoft’s Zune Music Service	All that DRM music is now useless (as are the players) because there is no cloud DRM authorization server to unlock the music people bought
Walmart, Yahoo, Virgin DRM	Zune’d
Ritmoteca	Zune’d
Samsung’s Milk	Zune’d
Grooveshark	For users who put in a lot of energy crafting and curating their play lists, well those nicely managed playlists are gone with the wind
Last.fm	More of a streaming radio service, but it ‘poof’d’
Rdio	Playlists Grooveshark’d, bye bye
Rhapsody, Napster	Zune’d and Grooveshark’d
Streamnation	Grooveshark’d
Online Backup and Storage
copy.com/CudaDrive	Both file storage and back up services go ‘poof’d’
Cubby	LogMeIn is a successful company and Cubby was a dropbox like service that went ‘poof’d’
Dell’s DataSafe	Dell’s cloud and backup storage goes ‘poof’d’ but now they want you to move to Dell Backup and Recovery service, because this time, they won’t let you down baby. This time they’ve changed….
F-Secure	Personal storage that aggregated all your data from numerous sources, then went ‘poof’d’
Megaupload	Personal file storage service embroiled numerous litigations, but your data went ‘poof’d’ with no real warning or way to get at it
Norton Zone	30-60 days notice given to ‘get your stuff out’ of their cloud storage, and then it went ‘poof’d’
Nirvanix	Cloud storage provider goes bankrupt. Of course the new owners (and perhaps their Russian hacker friends) will have much more than a week to make sense of what you thought was your data.  Good luck guessing what they did with that data
Pogoplug	Hope you got your data down with the luxurious week of time they gave you. Another cloud storage provider gone bankrupt
Seagate’s Wuala	Another major company closing down cloud storage that went ‘poof’d’
Symantec’s Backup Exec.cloud	At least Symantec gave users a year to get their backup data out, but nonetheless, a large company ‘poof’d’ their backup service.
Productivity
Google Health	Yea, trust your health, and health data to the cloud.  Super smart play.  Google says they would delete the data after 6 months… you hope
Meizu Flyme	Nothing like your document management system going up in smoke… “Meizu said all apps and services that are tied to the Flyme cloud service, including the Document Management and Gallery apps, will be completely deactivated […so you know, go $%&* yourself]”
Hardware
Coin 2.0	The cool multi credit card is useless without the cloud servers as you cannot reprogram your own hardware card
Revolv	Nest, the maker of smart thermostats (now owned by Google), killed this smart home hub product, so you know, good luck with your internet based smarthome/thermostat and other Internet of Things not working in the future
Software as a Service Backend
Cisco’s Intercloud	So you think that Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud are forever and they can never go away? Well tell that to Cisco about its Intercloud
DroneShare and DroneKit	Nothing like a flying device depending on some no longer functioning backend server
Facebook Parse	Parse was used by app/services/sites developers as backend to store and manage data for their app/services/sites

Next: Poof Goes Your Music, Backups, and Cloud-Reliant Hardware

Page 2 – Poof Goes Your Music, Backups, and Cloud-Reliant Hardware

Poof’d goes your music

The latest trend in eroding ownership of data comes from streaming music, e.g., Apple Music and Spotify.  In the guise of music discovery, this shift into music rentals is a careful weening of people off the concept of owning their own music or data.

Streaming music, in some ways, becomes the gateway drug to getting you to accept that you don’t own any data, but that your data is instead the product. And one day, when you have too many playlists invested in a service, you will discover the same pain all cloud services deliver. You’re stuck with that service if you want access to the data you created. If that service shuts down, you’re likely SOL in getting your own data out.

Just like Apple’s Ping, Microsoft’s Zune, Samsung’s Milk, Rdio, Grooveshark and other services, so, too, will these current streaming services one day die. At the end, you’ll have nothing to show for it. And if you think Zune and other DRM services aren’t cloud services, try to play those DRM tracks; they won’t play because the DRM authorization service required to play those now useless tracks was a cloud server that is no more. Also, good luck getting your carefully crafted playlists out of one service, and working in another service; all that invested energy in curating rented music goes down the drain.

But music is mostly meaningless compared to the other more valuable data you have up in the cloud.

Poof’d goes your online stored/productivity data/backups

So you thought it was a good idea to back up all your most sensitive data to the cloud? You pleb. What do you think happens with all that backed up data when your service provider goes belly up?  You hope the providers give you time to get your data out and securely delete it from their servers. At the very least, you hope service providers just delete it.

But if you look up on the list, you’ll see that some providers simply turned off their services. Users no longer had access to the data they uploaded, no easy data migration out of such services, nor could they delete that data.  Other services went out of business, and who knows where that data lands as assets go through the bankruptcy process.

Poof’d goes your cloud reliant hardware

What happens when your hardware depends on a cloud service that shuts down? The hardware becomes a brick. Take the Coin 2.0 credit card, a little plastic card that can load in up to 8 of your credit cards so you only have to carry the one Coin card. It’s useless now since it can’t contact its cloud server that recently shut down.

The Nest Revolv smarthome hub is a brick without a cloud server. Things like eero WiFi routers and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices that have to call a cloud server may become useless bricks once their wiretap connection goes dead with its cloud server host.

Have fun building your house with a ton of IoT devices that may go belly up with the ‘off’ switch of a cloud server. And beyond the boat anchoring of IoT devices, there are the tons of data generated by them. How many people are in your house, when you opened your fridge, when you went to the bathroom. All that data—not owned by you—will no doubt be lovingly cared for. Because nothing is more trustworthy than oversight of your most intimate data by a now defunct cloud service provider.

Next: Poof Goes Your World and Your Security, and Digital Serfs

Page 3 – Poof Goes Your World and Your Security, and Digital Serfs

Poof’d goes your world

This software-as-a-service-backend category is really a big deal. Software developers use such platforms to manage their app and user data. If all the above is not bad enough, what happens when a cloud service development platform shuts down? Those support thousands of apps/devices/services/sites and uncounted users.

Worshipping the Cloud

Well, potentially, it could brick thousands of apps/services/devices. Think it can’t happen? You think that software-as-a-service-backend platforms developers use to manage their own apps/devices/services/sites will be around forever? Services like Amazon web services? Think again. it’s already happened with Cisco’s Intercloud and Facebook’s Parse. The demise of those platforms sent a lot of app developers scrambling for a new back end; and not all of those reliant apps/services were updated, and many are now dead.

Look at all those services, all that user data in all the above cloud categories. It’s all gone. In many cases gone with no notification or chance for you to get your data back or delete it. But don’t worry, although you couldn’t get to that data, in many cases that data was resold. The new owners—still not you—will get to control and exploit that data any way they like. Who knows, maybe some of their hacker friends will have a good laugh exploiting all your most intimate data details.

Poof’d goes your security

With regard to security, take a look at the idiocy of people using Dashlane, LastPass and other online password managers.

If the Chinese, Russian mob, or some other uber hacker group want your information, they’ll get it. There is almost nothing you can do against a committed hacker’s attack other than having no online presence. And, if they really want your information, they can always find you, club you over the head, and get what they want.

No one cares about you or your individual information, and the odds of you personally being targeted are very low.  Dashlane, LastPass and others, however, are treasure trove motherloads for hackers.

Hackers are continuously trying to hack these big cloud services. And I guarantee they’ll eventually succeed—again. As such, your data and passwords are much more likely to be sucked up in a service breach than to have a hacker specifically target you and your local 1Password manager.

Worse, those services aren’t likely to immediately tell you of a breach. So you won’t even know you’ve been compromised.  Dropbox, Lastpass, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google, have all taken a long time before telling you about their breaches.

Hackers are minor league in compromising user data when compared to the companies themselves.  As they shut down services, go bankrupt, and/or get bought out, companies broker your data—and you—like so much chattel. When transitioning data from a failed venture, maintaining security of user data is not exactly the top-most concern.

Most of their user agreements basically amount to letting you know WE OWN YOU. But even if they don’t fully say that, once the service is shuttered and/or sold, the next owner will own you even more. With most cloud services, the ultimate product is you.

Digital serfs and the cloud is a lie

Yet, Silicon Valley and most idiot tech pundits want you to be a 2nd class citizen. They shovel cloud garbage down your throat because they know you’re too stupid to care or understand. They’re teaching your kids to be the silicon peasant class by educating them on Google docs. Because it’s OK to give up all your data, and your kids data, to save a few hundred bucks on software in exchange for owning you and your kids for life.

You’re too busy to fight for your kids and school district. It’s fine that all your kids’ thoughts and Google Docs assignments are in the cloud, and that they get hooked on using free crap software, brainwashed into not questioning it. Not only will Google and Facebook own them (knowing more about your kids than you), but once those cloud services are hacked, so will the hackers.

But what do you care, you saved $300 buying some piece of crap Chromebook instead of a laptop where they own their own data, selling out your own kids because you’re both cheap and stupid. They know you’re stupid, they’re counting on it, and frankly, they don’t have to worry about it. You’re that predictable.

Do as we say, not as we do

And yet, in the richest schools, you won’t see Google docs. You’ll see real computers and parents who don’t sell their kids out to the cloud.  And if you go to the elites in Silicon Valley, you’ll find “personal clouds” where people run their own servers (e.g., Synology) maintaining their own data.

The best lawyers and law firms will not put client data in the cloud. They know getting a subpoena to make a third party turn over client data is easier than getting a law firm to turn it over.  Those people are not dopes. Not like you.

So what will you do?  Not a damned thing. You don’t have the brain capacity to figure anything out yourself. They own you with every like, and you’re just fine with it. And they get you to do what you’re told because they know how. So go and sign up for another cloud service, you know you want to. They buy you for just the cost of a few clickbait clicks. You’re a digital serf. Bought and sold, cheap. You’ll believe what you’re told. And you believe in the cloud.

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