What if all your data files on Internet were simply lost one day?

Did you know that your data on the social media and other audio, image or video sharing sites is vulnerable?  Today, April 2, Google is shutting down Google Plus.  It seems there was a security vulnerability in it and Google figured that it was best to shut it down than to troubleshoot it.

Google+ is closing today. MySpace lost 50 mn songs over 12 years - what if your entire life's work stored on internet is lost? Rethink your data 'strategy'. Click To Tweet

On the other hand, MySpace was trying to migrate data from one set of server to another and they lost the entire data and they did not have any backup of all that. The company lost 50 million songs which had been uploaded over 12 years time. It was reported they were informed about using a service similar to Secure Data Recovery in an effort to recover the lost files. Many businesses that deal heavily with state of the art servers and data centers fully understand how important it is to their continued success that their own and their customers’ data is secure and is protected by an effective disaster recovery plan, should things go awry. Many opt for M247 Colocation solutions to ensure all this and more by making use of a physical location for their servers equipped with the latest technology and security.

The lost files had been uploaded from 2003 – the year of the company’s birth – to 2015, representing more than 50 million songs by 14 million artists. (source)

And, these days there are a lot of such purges and changes happening which are impacting folks.

The tremendous loss of digital artifacts, such as the Flickr photo annihilation, the Tumblr porn purge and the coming Google+ disintegration, highlights the impermanence of the Web, and the ease with which files and posts that helped define Internet culture and history can be so readily discarded.

From Flickr to Google+ to MySpace, the artifacts that people uploaded maybe gone.  Lets listen to this engaging and informative discussion with Brian Feldman, associate editor at New York Magazine, Jason Scott, digital archivist and historian for the Internet Archive, a nonprofit, free-to-use digital library, and Heather Richards-Rissetto, archaeologist specializing in the ancient Maya of Central America by Meghna Chakrabarti of OnPoint Radio.

Currently, many folks host their entire set of files on document management sites like Box.com or Dropbox.com.  One shudders to think what will happen if they shut down ever?  How will we respond to that?

Should we download everything and keep a copy offline in a physical form?  The time to ask that question is here.  Some tips that I can think of and will institute for my own personal data are:

1. Save in Triplicates: Those Government rules of every document to be given in triplicates?  I think it makes a lot of sense now.  So, save original on your computer, another copy on an external hard drive, and a third copy backed up online.
2. Use different types of storage: Have it on storage device and optical media – for example, backing up to both a hard drive and to optical media, like a DVD.
3. Keep one copy offsite: Natural calamities come unannounced.  So keep one copy offsite.  Where things that may happen to you will not impact and vice versa.
4. Keep upgrading your storage technology: Those who never upgraded from the old USB type to the new ones, may not even be able to use their storage devices anymore with the new computers.  So even though you may have your data, it might be totally useless.  I have faced this in a big way once, so I would keep it high on my radar.

If you follow these 4 basic rules, you can at least be ready for another MySpace calamity if and when it hits you.

Featured Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay