Cloud computing: Privacy and trust up in the cloud

BBC News - Cloud computing: Privacy and trust up in the cloud

This article addresses the issue of privacy "in the cloud," but not in much detail, and definitely seems biased toward the companies who offer these services.  It states:

Dropbox has more than four million customers who can upload digital content which is permanently synced across a number of their devices.

Adam Gross, senior vice president of marketing for the storage service said the cloud needs the trust of users.

He believes the cloud is "helping people keep their files backed up and safe and secure, rather than the old model where each individual PC user had to be responsible for it alone."

The following part of the article was of great interest to me.  I use Gmail and Google Docs quite a bit for schoolwork (and even work-related things) and definitely take for granted that those documents are always available from any computer.  Rarely do I also back up the files on a jump drive or some other tangible media.

Many students have become heavy users of the free collaborative online tools that are based in the cloud. This has prompted some colleges to go as far as banning cloud computing completely.

Others like the University of San Francisco have to send out constant reminders that trouble on the net is unacceptable as a classroom excuse. 

Not relying on the cloud entirely is one concern, but critics advise students to ponder on the physical location of their work, issues over ownership, and the rising fees for accessing it.

These factors may have to be taken into account by governments too in the future, and legislation could be needed to define new parameters for consumers.

Moving information to a virtual computer puts someone else in control of security, and there is an ever-present risk from hackers.

There, near the bottom of the article, the possibility of hackers was finally mentioned.  I decided to do a bit more research on privacy in the cloud and found this article, which took a much more frank look at the issues of privacy in cloud computing and provided several examples of what hackers have accomplished.  For example:

There already have been examples of privacy and security problems with cloud services provider Google. In March 2009, it was revealed, “Google discovered a privacy glitch that inappropriately shared access to a small fraction of word-processing and presentation documents stored on the company’s online Google Docs service.” Though the technical problem was fixed, customers’ sensitive data was exposed, and consumers had no control over the security situation. In July, A hacker was able break into a Twitter employee’s e-mail account and through that was able to get to confidential business documents that were stored on the business version of Google Apps.