Imagine walking into your local big box store to buy a $500 gift card. You try to redeem it to pay for your iCloud storage, but the card number gets declined. To make matters worse, Apple flags your account for fraud. Suddenly, they lock your entire account. Now, you are completely shut out. Your iCloud account, photos, music, and every other Apple service you subscribe to are now inaccessible.
Everyone always talks about using long and complex passwords and two-factor authentication to keep hackers out. But what if the company you entrust with your data is the one that locks you out? What is the recourse? What if they don’t see the problem the way you do? They might simply say you violated a policy, never tell you the specifics, and leave you with no access.
taking pictures or recording video with an iPhone and having it automatically back up to the cloud is incredibly convenient. I am not going to stop doing that anytime soon, and neither are most of you. However, we really need to think about situations like the one I described above because this isn’t just a hypothetical scenario; it actually happened to, Paris Buttfield-Addison, a user in Australia. As of this writing, I don’t believe he has resolved the issue. Apple reportedly won’t tell him exactly why they locked his account, at least not with enough detail for him to fix it. You can read all about his nightmare situation on his blog.
Do you have a backup of all your data in case that happens to you?
I wrote about a possible solution a little while ago using an app called Parachute. This tool connects to my iCloud account, downloads all the synchronized pictures and videos, and backs them up to my NAS at home. I also have another instance running that downloads my pictures onto an external hard drive or SSD at a different location. The app even lets you download your iCloud Drive files, which I have opted to do as well. Just in case.
If you don’t have a plan yet, I suggest you start thinking about your exit strategy. Just like it happened to that gentleman in Australia, it could happen to any of us. The folks at MacBreak Weekly did a great job explaining the problem and discussing solutions, so check them out in the video below, too.
#DataBackup #iCloud