Think of past stories like top secret information in a digital camera that got sold for a few pounds on eBay or the discovery of an USB stick outside a pub containing information about 12 million British citizens.

This time it was mere paper that was responsible for a data leak. Most users would think that pre-computer age politicians would know how to handle at least secure information on paper properly. This is apparently not the case as police chief Bob Quick managed to carry a document marked secret in public which immediately caught the attention of bystanding photographers.

The document, which can be viewed on the Guardian’s website contained information about an anti-terrorist raid. The details were extensive including names, addresses and command structures. The raid had to be conducted in bright daylight because of the security leak.

As Dante, who send me a link to the story points out: “It’s not just electronic security that
counts. It’’s also what happens when a user prints out the data.”

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There are two main online backup services: Mozy and Carbonite. Both offer a similar service: they upload files differentially and incrementally (as they are updated or made) to a server and those files can then be retrieved. Both are now also available for Windows and OS X. Prices are similar, although Mozy does offer users 2GB free of charge.

Carbonite offers a 15 day free trial, where you don’t even have to input your credit card information. This, like a regular subscription, allows you an unlimited amount of storage. Unlike a paid user, free trial users can’t upload music or movies, quite understandably. Paid users have no issue though.

I personally use Carbonite, but wouldn’t advise anyone against Mozy. Carbonite was quite simple to set-up, my only complaints are that it didn’t automatically configure the OS X firewall or my ports and a few minor user interface issues. I expect that it is much more polished on Windows, as their OS X version is a recent release.

Carbonite also provide remote access, so you can access your backed up files anywhere. This is useful if you need a file off your home PC at work, for example.

Uploading is fairly fast. After I configured my firewall and ports correctly, I managed to get a couple of gigabytes uploaded in one night. That is impressive considering I’m on a relatively slow (2Mbps downstream) ADSL2 connection.

Carbonite’s customer support solved any of my problems but I felt a lot of the dialog was scripted and for some reason it all seemed a little impersonal. Still, they provided me with solutions in a reasonable timeframe in a courteous manner.

Now, pricing. Carbonite is $55/year and Mozy (for home users) is $4.95/month. However, it is possible to easily save 20% on this through using Subscription.com . A couple of extra clicks can save $11 on Carbonite and 15% on Mozy. Go through this page for a Mozy and Carbonite offer code. I did this and found it a remarkably easy process.

Disclosure: Subscription.com reimbursed my purchasing a Carbonite licence under the condition that I reviewed it on my personal weblog. I was in no way required to show bias or blog about Carbonite on gHacks, I simply chose to as it’s a good service.

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A letter that has been send out by the Google Docs team seems to have made the worst case scenario true for some users of the online service. According to Techcrunch who received a copy of a letter that has been send out the following happened: The Google Docs team identified a bug in their online service that may have caused the sharing of documents without the knowledge or permission of the user.

“This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document. The issue only occurred if you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and changed the sharing permissions. This issue affected documents and presentations, but not spreadsheets.”

While it is unclear as to how many users have actually been affected by the bug it does outline the problems of storing documents, files and information on the Internet. There is always a chance that the documents will fall into hands that they are not intended for.

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