Ideas & Opinions
How safe is your data?
By JBC on 21 October 2009
GLOBAL – The folks over at Betalabs have been running a survey relating to data back up and security. It throws up some pretty interesting questions (and if you have a couple of minutes, we’d urge you to head over and let them know what your views) about data back up and recovery. Enough that we thought we’d run our own poll on the topic. With Ovi Suite 2.0 now graduated from Betalabs, it’s never been easier to back up the data on your device. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t become even easier, or that there’s a lot more functionality to be had around data security.
What tickles our fancy though is what kind of data you consider most important to back up. About five years ago my phone was stolen. I’d just recently been through all of my contacts to clean them up, but before I had a chance to back up, I lost the whole lot.
Today, my contacts and calendar live in the cloud (along with most of my working documents) and my phone, computer and laptop are becoming dumber and dumber. Replacing any of them shouldn’t be too much heartache, except now my concern about loss has more to do with settings and applications (images and video tend to synced the same day they’re shot).
And that’s where I think we’ve seen a big shift. Sure, for regular phone users, backing up their contacts would be a wise thing. Not having to plug a device into a computer to back them up would be even wiser (Ovi Contacts, anyone?). For those of us who spend more of their time with higher end devices though, our needs are entirely different. With myriad apps, advanced device settings and things like Bookmarks, map waypoints and myriad other bits of information to collect, our needs are rapidly changing.
Given the different tools we have at our disposal to store and back up information, I’m going to focus this week’s poll on understanding what you’d find hardest to restore. You can choose up to four options, and there’s an “other” box for anything I haven’t already included. Happy voting.
Photo by mstyne
Related posts:
- Keeping your data safe – the votes have been counted
- Ovi Contacts updated and polished
- Mobile ecommerce – a notion or reality?
Tags | backup, betalabs, Ovi Contacts, Ovi Suite 2.0
October 21st, 2009 at 1:50 pm
At least for me, one broken mobile phone was enough to stop me from storing any valuable information into my mobile phone. PC suite was available at the time, but since I didn’t have any Microsoft OSes at home, I didn’t have backups from the phone either.
With Ovi Suite, I’ll be waiting until we get version for Mac and/or Linux, but right now I am putting my hopes up for developing my own backup solution for N900.
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October 21st, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Nokia dropped the ball with security in the 5800 XM. The three main pillars of security are confidentiality, integrity and availability. A good backup strategy does nothing to address confidentiality. If a mobile phone is lost or stolen, there is a window of opportunity for data theft before the loss is realized, and the lack of on-device file and data encryption on my 5800 XM indicates that Nokia does not understand this. Of course iPhone and others missed this one too, although RIM, my Windows Mobile PDA and even the E71 got it right.
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October 21st, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Hi,
I never lost a phone or data before, and I hope I would never experience it.
Currently, since I use linux I can’t use the Nokia suite. I back up my address book to the ovi.com internet cloud. but I back up my phone data into computer with the supplied cable from nokia… plug the cable into computer and run it as usb drive.
I was about to try ovi files a couple of months back to back up some important files on the phone, but unfortunately, ovi files need me to have windows pc…. in which i don’t have windows pc.
why on earth I need a pc (windows pc to be exact) to backup my phone content??? I really hope the nokia ovi guy to notice this flaw and fix it. it’s a real shame to have this flaw.
one more things.
I don’t know if any of the frequent poster here have a relative or know someone that can use a smart phone fluently but have a trouble using computer. I know a large number of relative and friends of relative that were in their 50s-60s who have a bit trouble using computer, but very good with their phone. For them, having the need to install ovi files plug in on the computer is a no-no.
so, if nokia really wanna make their phone better. they need to think out of the box.
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October 21st, 2009 at 10:36 pm
I have no idea why no phone company seem unable to back up text messages??? Backing up of text messages to ovi wouldnt take up a large amount of server space and would be so so handy. In addition to perhaps being able to browse backed up messages online. (It could be tied to ovi email.. Id use ovi email then.;)
Im sure users would really really like this feature.
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Hary Reply:
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:38 am
@Chris,
Have you use the Ovi Suite2.0. I am not sure about PC Suite or the earlier Ovi Suite, but i know that Ovi Suite 2.0 beta version allowed backing up text messages on your pc.
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Chris P Reply:
October 24th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Hi Hary, well it saves your messages, it doesnt allow you to move them back to the phone if you lose the data/move the messages to a different phone. If it did, it would be a useful application – as it stands – whats the point of just having your texts on your PC?
Either the ability to restore messages using the ovi suite or store messages in the ovi ‘cloud’ would be awesome.
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October 22nd, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I have been using the ImageExchange, but a better Pict Sync should be good.
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October 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 am
Regarding the above poll,according to me the most difficult and hassle-filled item to replace would be the apps.
Reason: There are several Contacts backup solutions available currently like Ovi.com, Gmail, Ovi suite, pc suite, Mac Sync to address book. So if you back up to all these, you can easily replace your contacts from atleast one of them without much fuss.
Same thing applies to images, calendar entries as everything can be backed up in the cloud.
But applications. I don’t think so far, there is any way developed by Nokia or anyone else to back up applications from phone memory. So if you lose them you have to download one by one separately and if you bought them, you might have to face the hassle of re-downloading for may be 2nd time fee or not, but depends on case to case.[So far i haven't bought any apps, so don't know how much hassle is that.]
Device settings would be the next important thing that is hard to replace.
I think Nokia should develop something like Apple, where with new iTunes, they allow you to organize your apps on your PC/Mac and also back up the apps in the exact order stored in your phone. Similarly same thing for device settings too.
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October 24th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
If you lost your phone, what would you find hardest to replace?
Hah! this is sooo hard but the hardest to replace is the phone itself because I’m very sure that I cannot buy another high end phone due to recession, global warming, pollution, facebook, twitter and Megan Fox!
Very Hard to replace…
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November 18th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I bought the cellphone E71. When I wanted to upgrade the software, I found that the memory of the phone is 110M, but the new software asks for a memory of 256M for upgrading. So the upgrade failed. Could you please tell me how I can upgrade the new software for E71? Thanks.
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