The American Civil Liberties Union, based in New York, NY., Reported that the United States government claims the right to read personal data online without guarantees. This trend is not unique to the United States government. Many governments around the world also make requests to these service providers.
According to statistics published by Google, it received more than 16,000 requests for information that affected more than 31,000 users in 2012. The same statistics from Google indicated that they provided information in more than 85% of requests.
In 2012, Microsoft received more than 70,000 requests that affected more than 120,000 accounts. While this is a much higher number, Microsoft only produced information on these requests about 2% of the time. Almost 80% of the requests asked Microsoft to disclose only transaction and subscriber information.
Block thieves:
Businesses and individuals can take simple steps to prevent thieves, businesses, and the government from accessing online storage containing private information.
Here are some basic ways to protect or encrypt your data to prevent prying eyes from seeing confidential and / or personal information:
1) Data can be encrypted before it is stored in the cloud. Products like TrueCrypt, Privacy Drive and MyInfoSafe allow the user to encrypt their data. This type of encryption can be done for both files and folders before storing them in the cloud.
2) Use an “on the fly” encryption product that encrypts your data as stored by almost any online storage provider. Products like BoxCryptor, Cloudfogger, SafeMonk, and Viivo integrate with the cloud storage providers of your choice to encrypt data locally, but seamlessly before it is stored in the cloud. These services provide encryption completely separate from the storage provider, ensuring that even the storage provider’s employees cannot access the data stored in your company’s cloud.
3) Choose a provider that encrypts your data as part of their service. Storage-as-a-service companies such as SpiderOak, iDrive and Comodo not only transfer your data through an encrypted protocol, these companies also store the data in an encrypted format preventing those without a password from easily viewing your data. It is unknown if there is a back door that they can use to access the data stored on their servers.
Businesses are highly sensitive to government requests for information due to their legal responsibilities under privacy laws, such as HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Therefore, in highly regulated industries, such as financial services and healthcare, companies must strike a balance between government oversight and consumer privacy.
The US Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 was enacted in the early days of the Internet. The law did not require government investigators to obtain a search warrant to request access to emails and messages stored in online repositories. In 2001, the PATRIOT Act added the federal government’s authority to search for records under its “Library Records” provision, offering a wide range of personal material that you could delve into.
We are not suggesting that people should try to circumvent the PATRIOT Act. But companies and individuals must do everything possible to comply with data privacy issues. It should be up to the organization or individual to establish a policy regarding exactly what, when and to whom they disclose information about their cloud service provider.