- Rogue (or just bored) employees of web companies accessing customer data for fun or profit. (Happens much more often than you think, also in govt agencies.)
- Internet criminals breaking into cloud accounts and stealing data.
- Companies using their knowledge of their customers against those customers in disputes and legal challenges.
- Companies trying to extract the most financial value from customer data by selling it to questionable outfits.
- Foreign intelligence services and outright criminal organizations getting access (through 'hacking', bribery or threats) to any information hosted by any web service and many government institutions.
[I mean, for Christ sakes, if a news publication (NoTW and other tabloids) can buy some very private data of celebrities from UK police, how hard would it be for an organization with bigger resources and no fear of legal retribution to access any electronically stored data - especially by companies?]
* * *
And yet the trend in our merry startup world is to put everything in the cloud. Try asking any web company for a self-hosted version of their service.
For instance, can I get a Evernote server software to roll my own Evernote server? (Compiled and obfuscated, encapsulated in a VM appliance, I don't care.) Even if I was willing to pay for it like for any other software? No. Actually, Phil Libin was asked about it on the Triangulation show on TWiT. His answer? (paraphrasing) "Well, um.. It would be hard, um... The real question is: how do we make you trust us." Well, if that's your answer, you've already lost me. I mean, go ahead, keep my recipes and random silly photos. But if you expect me to trust you with my private documents or my schedule or anything of any IP value from my work, then you have a much bigger problem than communicating.
And so does your company, dear HN reader.
(Well, unless you're doing something frivolous, of course. If you're into the next FartingApp™ or photo-sharing-with-a-twist website, then I guess you're safe, for the most part.)