Crashplan drops its cloud backup service for home users
You’ll have to find an alternative to safeguard your files online.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/22/crashplan-drops-cloud-backups-for-home-users/

If you rely on Crashplan as a remote backup for your computer, you’re going to have to find an alternative in short order. Code42 is phasing out its Crashplan for Home service as it switches its focus to business users. The company has stopped offering new or renewed Home subscriptions as of August 22nd, and the service will shut down entirely on October 23rd, 2018. If you haven’t moved your files elsewhere by then, you’re out of luck. The team is trying to make the transition as gentle as possible, at least. It’s extending all Home subscriptions by 60 days to give people time to find alternatives, and it’s offering discounts for both its own Small Business tier and a preferred alternative, Carbonite.

You don’t have to go to either of those options, of course. Alternatives like Backblaze exist if you need to safeguard absolutely everything, and you can use free or low-cost services like Google Drive if you’re just interested in protecting a limited number of can’t-lose files.

The move isn’t entirely shocking, especially in an era where ISP data caps make it impractical to upload the entire contents of your PC. Businesses are more likely to need that absolute protection, and their tendency to subscribe in bulk makes them tempting targets.

Recently I wrote about losing some files from the laptop while traveling. Some readers responded with suggestions like using git or some cloud solution. Those are not really realistic options when working on an airplane, though more and more flights are now WiFi-enabled.

And I am quite suspicious of the cloud. While it surely has its merits and uses, it is yet another example of a new technology that we really don’t understand. The technology is clear, but legal and other implications are not.

Where is the data stored? If any copy is stored in an out-of-country data center are you violating Federal laws regulating the export of technology? Data files are subject these regulations, depending on their content.

We know at least some cloud providers scan files looking for illegal material. A scan of a binary could incorrectly appear to be a forbidden .JPG. Are you willing to engage the FBI in an expensive legal battle even when they are wrong?

Our backup strategy is multi-pronged and is designed to preserve files stupidly deleted or changed, to handle hard disk failures, and to be strong enough to survive some catastrophic event like a fire or zombie attack.

Certain files and file types can be globally excluded from a backup without having to modify the file selection by unchecking each individual file/folder. These exclusions can be added either by file type or by using regular expressions (regex).

Source: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/11/03/1954202/ask-slashdot-simple-backups-to-a-neighbor

One used to be able to buy a “Crashplan+” license which had a few more features like multiple backup sets for different destinations, but I don’t see any way to get that type of license without signing up for a cloud backup subscription. Perhaps if you sign up for a few months and then cancel the cloud backup subscription part, your software might retain the “+” features.

Source: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/11/03/1954202/ask-slashdot-simple-backups-to-a-neighbor