By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The short answer here, I would say, must be an emphatic NO, and especially with regards to any sensitive information, and therefore I would suggest that no one would place any tax records or anything of such a similar nature.
When it comes to using Google Docs for storage, if we want to use the longer answer, it really depends on the user’s tolerance for risk and what his or her other options are.
If you place confidential information on Google Docs, the risks include: Google being compromised by hackers, Google itself using the documents for nefarious purposes, your account being compromised, governments or other third parties requesting and obtaining access to the documents, and Google losing your information. None of these outcomes are very likely, but they’re all risks to keep in mind.
I would suggest that you consider that – in the small print – Google reckons that by signing up for the service and using it you give your copyright for anything that you store with Google, as with many other free “cloud services”, and that it, Google, has the right, therefore, to make use of any of your material in any way that it, Google, sees fit.
Therefore, personally, I wouldn’t put confidential information on Google Docs in any way, shape or form. Keep regular backups of the data on my hard drive and be vigilant about the security of my machines.
Documents that you may only need to keep – such as tax records, etc. – and can therefore remove from your hard drive I would suggest you “burn” them onto optical media, onto CD or DVD. Do not keep such data that you may need to have access to at times on USB thumb drives either.
Therefore, store your stuff off-line, an best on media that is not something that could fail. It is for that reason that I suggest not to use USB thumb drives as they can, like hard drives, fail and crash and you could lose your data.
© 2011
