“Cloud-storage provider iDrive has extended this appealing deal to owners of iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches,” Rick Broida reports for CNET. “You have to be a new iDrive customer, but otherwise the deal is exactly as good as it sounds: 50GB of cloud storage for an impossibly low 99 cents per year.”
“When iDrive first told me about this, I was sure it meant 99 cents for the first year, then a more typical $50 to $100 each year after that. But a company rep told me in no uncertain terms: ‘It will be the same [99 cents] a year from now. [This is not] a first-year discount or limited-time offer,'” Broida reports. “To get it, you need one of the aforementioned iOS devices on which to install the iDrive app and sign up for an account. (Never mind the in-app purchase options shown in the App Store; you should see the 99-cent deal once you swipe through the getting-started screens.)”
More info via Apple’s iTunes App Store: iDrive (Online Backup) – Pro Softnet Corp
Broida reports, “By the way, although you need an iOS (or Android) device to take advantage of this offer, once you have your iDrive account, you can use it across all platforms: Windows, Windows Phone, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.”
Read more in the full article here.
From reading the comment after that article, seems like iDrive gets a big thumbs down.
Make sure you guys read the users reviews. Real life use and service. This sure sounds like a great deal though. Wish Apple would increase it’s free iCloud storage to at least 10GB per iOS user.
If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product.
Sponsored by NSA.
Part of setting up iDrive gives you the option of setting up an encryption password (I just opened an account). I asked them–when I thought that I lost my encryption password–how to get my data back.
Here are their exact words: “This (the encryption key) is a user defined key that is setup by the user, when they setup the account for the first time. iDrive does not store your private encryption key on it’s servers and it is not possible to reset the encryption key.”
Which doesn’t mean–working on the assumption that iDrive personnel are being honest–that your iDrive encryption password cannot be broken, but depending upon the strength of your password, isn’t necessarily an easy thing.
Which means, short of some news about iDrive being hacked somehow, even if a information thief were to do so, then they would also have to get through your encryption password.
And anyone knows that most thieves will look for the lowest hanging fruit.
Well, get what u pay for. Signed up and uploading of folders doesn’t work on either of my two desktop systems, even using Google Chrome. Tech support opened a ticket so we shall see what kind of luck I have with that.
50GB of cloud storage for an impossibly low 99 cents per year.
No, not ‘impossibly’. Box already offers 50 GB forever for FREE. That recently became their default. Box also considerably improved their software. You still have to put up with the BS of DOS naming restrictions and lack of support for file resources. But for documents, its the single best deal in the cloud. I’m very pleased with their new software, which is a great leap forward from the crap the offered previously.
Big thumbs down. And this company is quick to auto-renew without warning and then deny you a refund. Watch out!!!
So,
-No doubt that 50GB is the new norm for free or nearly free now. Next year (or year after) it will be 500GB for same price.
-Until governments pass data privacy laws and adheres to them (never), you will never be able to read/assume/guess/fathom what a company may or will do with your data. There is no incentive by business or govt to limit the amount of data about you and me. This information is collected by multiple entities who have inconsistent policies on data privacy. And people at these companies have far too much access to your info.
-Only a few people have the capacity and understand the long term ramifications of the amount of data that is collected about you. It is used by advertisers as well as governments today. Today to sell to you, tomorrow to influence and educate you, and next week for…who knows.