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Isn't iCloud keychain not very secure?
- Thread starter davelanger
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OK. I respect your point of view, but I would not accept that level of risk.
User's who rely on the kind of backups we are discussing would have to be aware of all the potential pitfalls. I've only mentioned a couple and have not tested thoroughly. I definitely would not recommend this strategy to a casual user and don't feel it to be a serious strategy for critical data.
In my books, posguy99's challenge still stands.
That's right.
The objection being raised is that Apple seems to be suggesting that iCloud is the home of your data; you don't have to count on any one computer or device having it all. If that's the case, then they should guarantee the safety of that data or provide a way for the user to easily back it up.
Requiring a use to maintain one computer, always left on, just so that backups can be made suggests that this one computer is actually the official home of your data. This invalidates Apple's basic premise (or what I think is Apple's basic premise). Also, as I've mentioned above, I don't believe this will be a reliable representation of all your data.
It would appear you need to do some research on exactly what iCloud is. You seem to be lost.
I don’t think you understand what iCloud Drive is and what iCloud Drive isn’t.
Forgive me if I’m missing the point but surely the point of storing stuff in the cloud means it is Apple’s responsibility to ensure it is backed up?
I guess Apple could provide a data backup guarantee but I’m assuming that would have to cost an awful lot more than the current consumer level pricing as this would be more an enterprise feature.
To have them available across your other devices?
And you don't have to have them all stored locally - if you copy the contents of your iCloud folder to a local folder, that folder becomes your backup. And if you do this on a Mac that doesn't have any/all of the iCloud folder content stored locally, it will still download it when you paste it into the new folder. You can then keep that folder wherever you're comfortable keeping your other backups.
So if Apple suffered a catastrophic hardware failure that wiped out an entire server that all your data was on then they wouldn’t have even a single backup of that to restore it from?
I suspect they would have some kind of backup. But, show me where they guarantee the user no loss of data. It could be there is such a guarantee. Also, there should be the ability to maintain backups from different points in time.
By the way, I like all of Apple's cloud services. They've made a lot of progress. I only jumped in because one point posguy99 made was being dismissed casually.
Backups are critically important to me. I rotate through 4 full clones, maintain 3 time machine destinations, and have offsite backup using Arq to two destinations. I do this from my main work Mac, which I consider the definitive source of all data that I care about. If I were to ever to start using my iPhone more seriously, creating documents stored in iCloud and never opened elsewhere, I believe there's a very real chance that none of my backups would catch all such files.
Agreed. But, then there is a fundamental flaw in any such casual cloud solution that allows documents to be offloaded from backed up devices. There is a risk that a document will exist nowhere else.
This issue is not unique to iCloud. For example, Dropbox has the same flaw.
I think the point I’m making is that even if there is no guaranteed backup of your data (because you could argue that is more of an enterprise type service), there is still likely a backup. It’s just not guaranteed.
OK. We've kind of moved into the area of opinion. I really need a guarantee. If a file is missing from iCloud and I have it nowhere else, I need to know whom to call and have some assurance that they will work with me to recover the data. I absolutely do not believe this will be the case with iCloud. But, I could be wrong.
You will not get that sort of guarantee from a consumer level service such as iCloud. You would need an enterprise level service for that id assume.
Yeah, you're probably right. I'm really not sure how they could address my concerns. I've read a horror story of some person who lost files on Google's cloud. He couldn't get any assistance whatsoever.
It's really up to us to be diligent, understand the risks, and take countermeasures in accordance with our own tolerances.
So, maybe we're in agreement. 🙂
- iCloud storage is not a failure, as might have been suggested, because it didn't promise to be more than what it is.
- And, it is not a triviality, as was suggested, to execute a backup of iCloud (at a particular point in time) where all files are guaranteed to be there.
I have my photos downloaded in full on two different machines with time machine backups.
I’m struggling to find a real life event which would mean that I would lose a file due to mistiming backups so they coincide with the few seconds or minutes where the file would not exist in any place, and therefore not be backed up. In my use case at least.
I’m vigilant though, and take care of my own backups. Ymmv.
It happened to me. Certain files refused to appear on my Desktop which were on the Desktop of a machine I don't backup. I eventually triggered the files to download by creating another file in the same folder.
Have you ever seen an SLA (service level agreement)?
It's kind of like iPhone water proofing. They have made a ton of effort to make that great, but they won't support you if there's water damage.
I have a backup everything that is in my iCloud. And for everyone else that would like to do that, go to AppleID.Apple.com and request your data. Once Apple confirms your identity, you will be provided with a working link to download all your iCloud data.
But, this thread is really about iCloud Keychain. I have to think through what my reservations mean with respect to counting on iCloud Keychain. I use 1Password and duplicate all my passwords in my 1Password account and a Dropbox vault. I believe the iCloud Keychain is completely safe from prying eyes, but I don't rely on it to remember critical things.