Two incidents involving Verizon Cloud Storage and the company’s use of “supercookies” poses big ques
When Verizon Wireless performed a 40-hour maintenance shutdown with its Verizon Cloud infrastructure last January 11-12, 2015, there were speculations that customers’ data might get lost, get corrupted or go somewhere else.
When democrats senators, last February 2015, wrote to FCC and FTC highlighting Verizon’s probable violation of consumer’s privacy by inserting tracking codes, termed by data experts as “supercookies”, to each site visited on a person’s mobile device, the controversial issue involving the NSA resurfaced.
With over 125 millions subscribers in the US, Verizon Wireless holds and protects huge volume of data on their cloud storage system on a daily basis. But with these two recent incidents involving the telecom giant, here come again these questions concerning data security and consumers’ privacy.
Is my data safe on the cloud?
Are my files really kept private?
For most cloud service providers, these are easy questions and their answer would be simply “yes”. You will more likely hear this statement as well from legal advisers when they speak in the press. “Data security and consumers’ privacy are part of our Terms and Conditions of Service.”
To better understand the meaning of these business jargons, let’s consider the case of Verizon Cloud.
Verizon Cloud, like any other cloud storage solution, is a Storage-as-a-Service (SaaS) powered by cloud computing technology and server/network management infrastructures. It’s none other than a data centre that warehouses consumers’ data. Inside this data centre are software, virtual machine monitors or hypervisors, network management tools and equipment (server, cabling, routers, connectors, monitors), and engineers and technicians who operates the entire facility 24/7.
The moment you upload data (music, pictures, videos, contacts, documents, text and multimedia messages) on your Verizon Cloud, series of data and computer communications governed by file transfer protocols (FTP) will take place until the data is finally saved or backed up in the cloud. These can all happen within seconds depending on parameters such as file size and internet connection speed (on the client’s side) and load balancing and application performance (on the provider’s side).
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) are software/hardware technologies vital in running data centres, even private networks. These technologies are tools for maintaining and monitoring websites, software application, enterprise systems, storage appliance and all the physical and virtual infrastructures used in storing and safe guarding client’s data.
In the case of Verizon Cloud, you are paying them a premium of $2.99/month in exchange of 25GB cloud storage space, features like data synchronization in all your devices, and services such as data protection, data security and customer support. As a client, it is your privilege to be protected against possible data lost and damages even when incidents like network breach and malware attacks occur.
Now, let me answer the big questions.
Is Verizon Cloud a safe vault for your data? While the recent 40-hours black out stir confusions among consumers, Verizon Cloud is safe. Do Verizon respect your privacy as a consumer? Now that’s for you to find out in the coming days.
