You will often hear informed IT people (often System Administrators) refer to the cloud as "Someone else's computer". Technically, they are correct. The cloud is indeed someone else's computer. Many computers as a matter of fact. So why should you care? One of the reasons is that you may already be using the cloud and not even know it. More and more companies are using the power of cloud technology every day to improve their services to the public, and cut down on their operational costs. Services such as Facebook, X.com, Instagram, and Snapchat are all cloud-based services. Applications running on large groups of interconnected computers at remote locations on the internet.
File storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive are hosted on computers out on the internet somewhere. Many people have personal web pages hosted on cloud-powered sites. Google's Gmail product is cloud-based, so your email is out on the cloud as well.
So is the cloud safe? It's as safe as your service provider can make it. So check the small print in the end-user agreements, and don't put anything in the cloud that you can't afford to accidentally share with the entire world!
