Digital Backups

It's a really good idea to back up the data on your digital devices. There was even a World Backup Day recently, to remind people to keep copies of their data in case of catastrophe. Which is a good excuse to discuss what I do for backups, and why I recently cancelled my subscription to a backup service. (Yes, really; no April Fool's Day joke here.)

I've used more tape drives over the years than I like to admit, but they're no longer my backup solution.

There's two major reasons to have a backup of your digital assets. Either it's something you can't re-create, like photos or some kinds of important documents; or it's something that you'd have to spend a lot of effort (time, money, maybe both) to replace, like backing up your entire computer's hard drive. I find that I worry more about the former than the latter. I generally have the time I'd need to rebuild something if necessary, even if it's an inconvenience. And honestly, in the case where I was recovering an entire device, I'd usually rather have a fresh start anyway.

The vast majority of the data that I use day-to-day is somewhere in the cloud. My account data in LastPass, pictures on Google and Facebook, blog posts on Blogger, various types of documents in Google Drive or Dropbox, email in GMail, games on Steam, music on iTunes/Google Music/Amazon Music (not to mention Spotify). This certainly makes backups easy, since those services generally do it for me. Of course, I'm running a bit of a risk that they might lose my data (or sell it off to someone), but that's a risk I'm willing to take in exchange for the convenience factor.

For sensitive information that I really want to make sure are kept safe, I don't just trust the services...I keep multiple copies and encrypt them. For instance, tax documents. First, I encrypt the files to limit the danger that they might be stolen or otherwise misused - the simplest way is to use 7-Zip to bundle them all up and encrypt the archive. Then I put that archive in a few difference places: Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. When you need to update them, extract the files, make changes, then re-encrypt and distribute the updated archive. It's not the most efficient process, but that's not a big problem since those kinds of important documents don't change often - usually just a couple of times per year.

If my condo was robbed or burned down or whatever, causing me to lose my various digital devices, I could recover anything important from what I have in the cloud. I'd have to get new hardware, and it might take a while to re-install the various applications I use, but the data would be there waiting for me to be back up and running.

All of which brings me to why I cancelled my subscription to Crashplan, a remote backup service. I just didn't need it any more. Nothing against Crashplan - they provided exactly what was advertised and I never had any significant issues with the service. It just seemed silly to pay for and use up resources on a service that was redundant.

Privacy and Government Compulsion

The US Department of Justice and Apple are in a legal battle over whether the company has to unlock one of their phones at the government's request. My opinion is that Apple is right, but not necessarily for privacy reasons.

The phone in question belonged to one of the shooters in the 2015 San Bernardino attack. Federal prosecutors believe the phone could hold evidence related to the attack. Apple says that they have cooperated in providing information that they have access to, such as what the attackers backed up to iCloud. But they've drawn the line at providing tools that could help to unlock the phone itself.

The natural surface reaction to that stance is "why not" - after all, the shooter is gone and his phone is physically held by the FBI. The issue, as Apple CEO Tim Cook stated in an open letter on the Apple website, is that the government wants Apple to build a tool that disables security features on the iPhone. Once they've done that, the government can order the use of that tool any time they want iPhone data. The next case might not be as clear-cut as a known perpetrator of a terror attack.

I don't have strong feelings on the privacy part of this issue. I understand the argument that any violation of privacy by the government is the first step on a slippery slope leading to a Orwellian Big Brother dystopia. I also understand the need for law enforcement to access the information of known criminals. Like nearly everything in life, I think the answer is somewhere in the middle rather than either extreme. If the government finds a way to open up that phone and get the data they need, then more power to them. (And it feels like they should be able to. There are a lot of very skilled hackers in the world, surely the FBI could find one.)

Where I do have a problem with the government's request is that they're trying to get Apple to weaken their own products. Once you've built a security-circumvention tool, that tool could end up in the hands of unscrupulous users. It also sets a legal precedent to force other companies to do similar things. Both of those things are dangerous to the public at large, not just criminals.

If any government believes that they need to have access to their citizens' information (electronic or otherwise), then they need to set up rules beforehand that allow them access. The free countries in the world don't have such access-granting rules, and likely won't because the people won't stand for it. Coming in after the fact and trying to force a company to violate their own privacy promises to the consumer is no better, and we shouldn't allow either.

Online Account Management

Almost everyone has a bunch of different online accounts these days. Email, social media, banks, shopping, etc, etc. Keeping track of all of the logins is difficult, and it's easy to fall into poor habits. In the 20-ish years since I got started with online accounts (in college), I've gone through just about all of the bad ideas. As technology changed and I learned about better options, I've improved how I deal with all my various login information.

The single worst thing you can do is use a very weak password, like the ones on this annual worst password list. Of course, that's how I started out. I think my very first password ever was "wordpass1", and it was only saved from being "password" because the system wouldn't let me use that.

Only slightly better than weak login information is using the same information everywhere. I had two standard passwords for years: one for "important" accounts like email, work, and banking; and one for everything else, like games and online forums. I'd also choose the same "security questions" on every account whenever possible. This allowed me to 1) remember my passwords and security questions and 2) not need a list of all my accounts, since if the "standard" didn't work on a particular site, I'd know it was a new site and I should create an account. The problem with this approach is that if one account is compromised, then everything else using that same login information is vulnerable.

Currently, I use the online password manager LastPass (and there are other similar products). This tool requires you to have a single master password which unlocks access to your "vault." You put an entry into the vault for each account (web site URL, username, password, even security questions and answers). That takes some work to set up at first, but you can do it over time, as you access the various sites that you use. This allows you to use a different (often completely random) password on each account, change them regularly, and still have no trouble remembering them...all you need to remember is the master vault password. I go a step farther with security questions - I'll select nonsense answers, relying on my vault entry to retrieve them at need, so anyone trying to bypass my password by answering security questions will have a really tough time. LastPass provides browser plug-ins and an Android app, which make it simple to log into sites without having to manually open the vault and copy the information into the login forms.

That's not to say that using an online password manager is a perfect solution. The master password is the most obvious vulnerability. Mine is fairly long (15+ chars) and consists of multiple unrelated words and numbers. I change it regularly. I also use two-step authentication via Google Authenticator on my phone, so even if someone guesses the password, they'd also have to have my phone (or access to my email in order to turn off the two-step process).

Another vulnerability is the online aspect of the password manager. LastPass itself could be compromised, which puts all my information at risk. I've read about the measures they take to prevent this (a good summary in this blog post) and I'm willing to accept that risk for the convenience that their service provides. For those who would rather not rely on an online service, there are other options, such as KeePass or 1Password, that allow you to keep your data locally. It's a bit less convenient since you need to share the data between your various devices, and make sure to keep it backed up. But it is more secure.

In a perfect world, we'd be able to avoid all this mess entirely, and rely on something like biometrics to access all of our online services. But that kind of thing is still imperfect and very expensive, no matter how often you may see it on TV or in the movies. For now, a password manager is the most secure solution that is also practical.