Hazards of Free Software and Email Backup
A Backup Article Contributed by M. Larose
Hazards of Free Software and Email Backup
Free backup software has its great moments and its outright debilitating moments. You should know about the upside of free backup software and the dangers before putting all of your critical data in the hands of the free backup software kings. Next time you save something to a free backup service that of course has free backup software think again. Your data could go missing forever and there is no recourse.
Free Backup Software Saga
The incident I am about to tell you of is indicative of situations that can happen often when free backup software is being taken advantage of. It's not the first time this has probably happened and it won't be the last time. So read on and take this as a warning to protect your critical data in more than one way and do not rely on software in general to solve all of your problems even if it looks like the best idea ever, putting all of your data in one place will make you cry like a baby at some point in time.
Free Backup Software and Free Storage Services
I learned this one during my second round of college, always bring a second copy of your work when you are making a presentation. If you put the presentation on a disk, copy it to a second disk. But evidently the average hotmail user did not consider this when storing a year's worth of correspondence, both personal and business, along with photos and a soon to be taken trip itinerary on her hotmail account. The free service went down and the user had no recourse when she was told her data was gone forever.
Hotmail is a free email service site and often its customers use it as a free backup software site as well. Recently they upped the free backup storage software space available to 250mb. This encourages more and more unsuspecting souls to put their trust in a free backup software and storage site not knowing they have no recourse should they lose their data by the hands of the providing service. Service agreements acknowledged by the user provide an open gate and broad exemptions when it comes to the provider's responsibilities.
Unknown to most users are the dangers in the area of data protection and destruction by online services. Online services, whether free or paid for, have a level of responsibility to their customers and the data they store. They should be using the backup process and software to protect their customers. Are they? Who would know for sure?
Use Backup Software to Protect Against Free Service Agreements
As simple as it sounds you must keep more than one location for backup data. Ensure your data is safe by using your own backup plan and software to copy your data to a second location. Some email services have options for downloading your email and retrieving them using an email client such as Outlook. This puts your data in two locations. Some free services will charge you extra for the backup of your files. This certainly no guarantee that the data is safe but at least you have backup if you need to recover.
