An awful lot has been discussed in the wake of the Edward Snowden situation and his whistleblowing revelations about the NSA’s data surveillance practices. The bulk of it has understandably focused on Snowden’s own legal battles and the broader issue of domestic espionage and unethical data collection. However, what of the data lockout?
Take Lavabit, the encrypted email service once used by Snowden, for example. Ladar Levison, the company’s founder, shuttered the service after the FBI asked for the encryption keys that could theoretically given US authorities access to every customer’s data. A noble move on Levison’s part, however what about the people who couldn’t access their data anymore?
On Monday Levison released a statement to inform that users would have a 72 hour window in which they could access their information, however, as the statement itself said, “… those who used Lavabit’s email service… were left without a way to access information after the shutdown.” Lavabit shuttered its service in August, leaving over 400,000 users adrift without access to their data.
It’s not too much of a stretch to envisage a time when a social network might take similar steps to ‘protect’ the privacy of its users, but in doing so completely detach them from the very data that may be the lifeblood of their business. Can you imagine trying to do your job without being able to access your email history or customer database? For many of us it would be nigh on impossible.
The only way to be certain that your data is accessible around the clock is to take control of it yourself and make sure you have a locally stored backup copy that you can go to in the event of the originals being deleted or withheld.
SocialSafe enables users to take control of their social media interactions, downloading and keeping a complete local record of everything, aggregating it together and providing powerful tools to access their library displaying the information, providing a full calendar and journal, allowing search across all data, insights and many additional functions too.
To start backing up your online content to your own private library on your own machine, get SocialSafe now. It’s extremely easy to use and you can be using the in-built analysis tools within minutes!