Limits to Cloud confidence

This morning I wrote my Sunday sermon, tidied my office, and shredded some old documents. There are more to do, which no longer have relevance, as they are so old and not really interesting to anyone any longer. On a suggestion from Clare, I also started compiling a list of vital personal information on my digital life, and finances for others to use when I'm incapacitated or dead. Half way through, writing up this on my Chromebook, it occurred to me that, no matter how good Google Cloud security is, a digital document can still be found read by others, unless encrypted. The chances of this may be very remote, but there can be no such thing as 100% certain security, ever. Yet here was I, at the drafting stage, working on a computer with on-line storage, which, if my password was stolen could be found by someone else and my digital secrets hijacked. Not a good idea. 

I transferred to file to an external flash drive, then double deleted it from the Chromebook  system. When I went later to examine the file on an off-line computer, the data consisted only of information to connect to the deleted Cloud stored file. Caught out! Data lost. If only I'd first created a file on an off-line computer coupled to an external flash drive, this wouldn't have happened. Almost everything I do on computers I am prepared to entrust to secure on-line storage, except the digital keys to access it all. Putting everything on one piece of paper is the eventual answer, and making sure this is kept in a safe place to be found only on a need to know basis. Now I'll need to start again, though not today.

This afternoon I needed to go into the office again for a final planning session with Ashley before leaving for Spain. On the way there, I remembered I needed to buy some 'cargo shorts' and a dark short sleeved shirt. On impulse, I turned into the Edinbugh Woollen Mills shop on Working Street, and within minutes bought exactly what I needed. I don't much like shopping, as so often it involves agonising over an excessive variety of choices, so this was a fortunate impulse which saved me time and effort.