Top 5 ways to keep your private files safe and untouched on the cloud

Cloud storage is something, which most people rely upon, nowadays. But cloud storage, when it came to the world of technology, seemed to be pretty strange. A lot of storage spaces, like 10 GB, 15 GB or so, were offered for free. At that time the prices of SD cards of such sizes used to cost around $15 to $20. But as time went on, we started embracing the technology, and most people including me, use it for backup purposes, accessing the files from a different location and finally for the flexibility it offers. Today we have a lot of cloud storage options, and some of them are ready to offer 100 GB, and that too for free.

But whenever we are using cloud storage to store our files, we are actually using the physical storage, which is offered to us by some other companies. But nothing in the world is actually free. We are getting those free services by giving them the permission to see our data, analyze the same for their own business and offer us some relevant advertisements, which we might be interested in. The business policy though is a subject to vary. Thus, are our private data are no longer private on the cloud storages! But are there ways to protect the private data on the cloud storages! I will cover the top 5 ways to protect your files on cloud storages.

Top ways to protect data on our cloud storages.

Avoid storing sensitive data on the cloud

Are you having some really private data, which might cost an arm and a leg, if leaked? If so, it is recommended to not store it on your cloud storage. The simplest solution. The big companies will never leak your data purposely, but such data will be a small part of the big input which will be used for the purpose of analyzing it for their own benefits. It might vary from company to company, depending upon the privacy policy.

But your privacy is always yours. Thus, if some of your files and data are really private, and you don’t want others to get hands on it, it is better to keep it on your personal server, or on an external hard drive, if possible. Though science always comes with some solutions, which I will be discussing at the end of this article.

Sign out of unused devices

Cloud storage platforms are meant to be accessed from multiple devices to get access to all the files, edit them, delete them from wherever you want. We also have the provision to download the app on computers and smartphones to sync a particular folder with the respective cloud storage. That seems to be good, but you should always sign out of your cloud storage accounts from computers and smartphones, which you hardly use.

It is very important if you are using a shared computer used by multiple people in your family. It will prevent other users from getting access to it. Thus, it is not always the companies, who will take our data, sometimes, it is our mistakes and carelessness which eventually risk our important and private data.

Read the privacy policy properly

Free cloud storage is a matter of excitement for most users. To them, it doesn’t matter, how the files and data are treated on the cloud. It is quite acceptable to some extent for some files and data, but not completely. That being said, if you are having some sensitive data, read the privacy policy of the cloud storage provider before you start using it, or before storing some sensitive content on to it.

I know how tedious and boring it is to read the privacy policy. But reading the privacy policy is the only way to know, how the company is going to treat your data, making things much more transparent. If you are satisfied with the way the company treats your data, go for it. Else, find some other service cloud storage providers.

Encrypted cloud storages

There are some cloud storage providers, which encrypt your files locally before uploading the same to the cloud. It means, they do not have the key to decrypt your files. It provides complete security for your data. Unless the encryption key, which technically stays on your computer is transmitted to the cloud storage provider, they will have no way to decrypt your files, thus ensuring complete privacy.

If you want the maximum privacy of your data, this is the best option. SpiderOak, Wuala is a few of the cloud storages with local encryption. The only catch for using these kinds of cloud storages is that, in case you lose the password, it is hardly recoverable, and all your data will be lost. So better keep your password in some safe place before enjoying such breathtaking privacy.

User-end encryption

In case you can’t afford cloud storages, which offer local encryption, either for space limitation or something else, you can always encrypt your files at your end manually before uploading it to the cloud. Though that adds an extra step before uploading your contents to the cloud, that makes a lot of sense, if the only thing you want is privacy.

There are numerous ways to encrypt your files locally, but you can even do that by archiving the most sensitive files before uploading the same to the cloud. Once your data is encrypted, it becomes difficult for the cloud storage providers to break into it for analyzing the same. You can read how to do that, in this article.

So those were the ways to keep your files safe on the cloud, lest you have some private data or files. Cloud storage is one of the best solutions to store files nowadays, and acting a little smart can help you from a possible data breach, or get your private files seen by others.

Hope the information was helpful for you, and you will be able to keep your files safer on the cloud from now on. Have other ways to keep your files safe? Feel free to comment it down below.

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