ELPBack

Robyn Peterson isn’t a computer newbie - after all, he’s in charge of technology for tech publisher Ziff Davis. So how did he lose his backup? Using a popular techie solution for online backup: FTP-ing his files to a web hosting provider. A perfectly reasonable, if somewhat tedious, solution. But as he found out, not such a secure option.

“We have been cracking down on people using our services for backing up files,” Robyn was told by the provider. The Terms of Service said their “servers are not intended as a data backup or archiving service.” Don’t check the fine print? Or don’t think it’ll be enforced? Ok sometimes…but when you really need that backup, you don’t want the response Robyn got when he asked whether his deleted files were backed up: “backups go back a maximum of only two weeks, and no backups are guaranteed.”

A Pittsburgh-based shareholder services firm lost a box of computer data tapes which stored personal information such as names, Social Security numbers and possibly bank account numbers.

March 26, 2008
THE BALTIMORE SUN | A Pittsburgh-based shareholder services firm has notified about 3,500 individuals — some of them Maryland residents — that the company lost a box of computer data tapes last month storing personal information including names, Social Security numbers and possibly bank account numbers, a spokesman said Wednesday.
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