Do you trust the Cloud?

Happy day after Boxing Day! Hope you had a good Christmas. I had a lovely quiet Christmas Day with my immediate family, then Boxing Day at my in laws where we all competed to see who could eat the most chocolate. It may be just as well then that I got an exercise tracker as one of my Christmas presents. It’s a wrist strap that monitors how much exercise I take plus the quality of sleep I get.
It all seems like a good idea – I need to get fitter after all the chocolate and an exercise tracker is a good way to be aware of what I’m doing (or not doing). So watch this space, I may become transformed into a lithe and athletic superhuman by next Tuesday.
I was talking to my sister in law about it and she suggested I’m basically volunteering to be electronically tagged and asked what would happen if all the information about me got into the wrong hands. That got me thinking. Recently I started putting all the family photos on the Cloud thinking it was a good back up. But when we upload information that gives away our whereabouts and personal details while storing on the Cloud our unfolding lives or entire photo albums then are we risking loss of privacy? We can set strict privacy settings and have private or locked photo albums, but look at the people who’ve had private photos stolen from supposedly private domains, or the hacking of emails or mobile phone records.
I’ve decided that I will nevertheless stick with my new regime. I don’t think that details of how much exercise an unfit children’s author is or is not taking is a matter of national security. If some evil regime gets hold of the fact I walked at a reasonably fast pace for 25 minutes this morning it’s not going to be of any use to them in their plot to enslave the world.
Or is it? (Imagine scary music here.)
Where will it end? If I electronically tag myself without a second thought will I following the same logic be one of the first in line for a brain implant that promises to aid my memory, help me to lose weight and look ten years younger and give me an increased sense of well-being? Probably. I’m clearly a fool.
So what do you think? Are you going to embrace all the new tech and trust the Cloud or treat it with suspicion?
I hope you have an enjoyable and chilled out rest of 2014 and a Happy New Year. I intend to dance so enthusiastically at the New Year’s party I’m going to, my exercise tracker will surely be fooled into believing I’ve run a marathon.