If you’re old enough to remember him, think of Gomer Pyle as I say this:
Surprise, surprise surpise!
All that stuff you drop in DropBox? Even if it’s encrypted? The Federal Government Sez: All your data are belong to us. See the article and the great graphic at http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/if-you-have-something-to-hide-from-the-government-dont-use-dropbox/10283?tag=nl.e620.
If you haven’t been a student of mine, let me emphasize: the exact same thing is true of your Yahoo or Google email account. Unless you’re paying for (some degree of) privacy on these services, your email is being indexed. And it’s searchable. Not by you, though. Only by other paying customers: advertisers. Please, do think about that.
I’ve had some trouble communicating this to people and organizations that transfer sensitive, or potentially sensitive in the face of a lawsuit, information. Unfortunately people are largely behind the curve on this issue, and won’t believe there’s a problem until somebody gets stung, hard. Which won’t be long, I’ll go out on a limb to predict.
(Thanx and a hat tip to info insider Herbbie)