in case you thought data in the cloud was safe

Some anecdotes on data loss in the cloud:

• online backup provider loses data, sues systems provider
• Nokia’s Ovi service loses user contacts and images
• ma.gnolia lost all user data

A more complex case, where the provider did (mostly?) the right thing:

• Yahoo closing its locker service after 10 years

These are not necessarily straightforward; each failure has disparate causes (too much reliance on expensive hardware in the first case; too little, perhaps, in the ma.gnolia case). But understanding what happens and when here is important as more and more of our data moves cloud-ward.