I am mostly OK with cloud-based services that keep a master set of my files so long as I have a complete set on my hard drive too. That’s how Dropbox works. I give up some privacy — if Dropbox gets a subpoena or a National Security Letter they’ll give up my data and I’ll never know, plus the stuff is no doubt scanned in transit by You Know Who. But I get a lot of convenience, plus the security of being able to recover accidentally deleted files. And if something is really private, I could just keep it off the Dropbox.
Where I draw the line is cloud-only services like Google Drive or Box.com. This ITworld article, How Box.com allowed a complete stranger to delete all my files illustrates why.
Photo Copyright (c) 2009 Derrich, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Apple’s new Mac OS, “Mavericks” ends USB-based syncing of Contacts & Calendars, and requires all users of Apple mobile devices to instead synch with their computers via Apple’s cloud service. FWIW
Drive has a desktop sync client here:
https://tools.google.com/dlpage/drive