Way up in the Cloud

Relax. Every muscle in your body goes limp now, feel free to slouch on the chair with your arms resting motionless, your hands on the edge of the desk, imagine a white light in the center of your chest growing, slowly flooding every vain, every tissue, every cell inside you in a comfortable white light that will protect you and guide you through the rest of the journey. Imagine the light growing and growing until it’s shining around you, a white halo surrounds your and you start to levitate, higher and higher, as high as the clouds that are now all around you. look around. see your cloud. your own personal cloud and float slowly towards it, slowly, very very slowly. Notice how it’s tailored for you, by you, so suit every little nuance of you body, notice the entrance in the cloud. Feel free to sit, relax, let your body rest against the soft white cloud that protects you, the feeling of protection not unlike the protection you once felt in your mother’s womb. close your eyes, let your body go. feel it become one with the cloud. slowly melting into the cloud, so comfortable, so cozy.

Now the cloud is gone, you’re in mid air and the halo of light is now red with inner panic and emotional turmoil. you start to descend, waving your arms and screaming “why?” as best you can wile the fast air fills your mouth, drying your throat and for a second you remember how amazingly safe you felt just now, a second ago, and how quickly it all changes.

I Want Sandy is closing it’s doors on December 8. That bright, innovative cloud began to pour rain on it’s users today and it will continue to do so until it’s out of business on the 8th. It’s a shame, I for one used the service and raved about it to friends and colleagues who in turn started using the service. Twitter bought Sandy and the developer (and CEO) of sandy joined the twitter ranks.

Though I mourn the end of Sandy, this post is much more about security, clouds, and storage of personal information somewhere out there, where your prayers of “I wish I’d never lose this” have been answered for better and for worst.

Sandy knows my phone number, it knows most of my friends birthdays and it’s not too hard for someone with access to my Sandy info to predict when will be next time I’m going for a hair cut. Even my christmas shopping list is there.

Well..was there. I’ve just spent a good amount of time deleting everything and canceling my account. But what guarantees me that it’s indeed deleted? It wouldn’t be the first time that a web app keeps deleted (or discarded) data long after a user has deleted an account.

The cloud is awesome, everyone loves the cloud. It’s a bit like the Simpson’s skyline right now, blue, pretty and looks sunny even thought there’s no sun in near sight (no pun on the current Sun situation intended)

I’m not very picky as to where I post my photographs and bio, I have a facebook account, a twitter account with my picture on it, hell, I have a blog with my CV on the right pane! I’m not as paranoid about security as people think I am.
Now what worries me is that 4 years, 8 years from now I can get an email from Sandy or from any other “past” online service.

But services like Sandy worry me more than most out there because of the sheer amount of raw information about me, my life and life style, what I like, my habits and so on. It’s a single repository with far too much information about me. and it can disappear just like that, and my data (that I willingly submitted) will be directed to the trash bin, or stored for eons, accessed by someone, sold to a third party, hell…anything not foreseen in the user agreement can happen. It’s gone, and in a shroud of cloudiness that is beyond my control or reach.

RandsInRepose wrote a great article on how the cloud is all about letting you be dumb, problem is you really have to smarten up once it starts to rain. And you better to it fast.