 It doesn't seem like there's a day or a week that goes by that we don't hear about a major security breach as some large corporation that has been trusted with a lot of user data. And this trend seems to be something that is going to continue for ever probably simply because it often seems that companies don't treat the data that we entrust them with with the care that we hope that they would. So either they don't do a good job of securing it. I mean we hear things all the time about them leaving user information stored in plain text for no apparent reason. And we hear things where you know that their employees are leaving you know important laptops just lying around or whatever. And you know no matter what the reason is behind the security breach it oftentimes feels like the company behind it or the company that was responsible for securing the data hasn't done as good of a job as they should have. Given the fact that we have entrusted them with our data. So the question that I want to answer or ask today is should we trust the cloud to protect our data. And if not what can we do to protect ourselves. So I am not the most privacy focused Linux YouTuber out there. I freely admit that I use Google services all the time I have to for work so it's just something that I have to do. I use other proprietary services like music streaming services and discord and a to do list app that's proprietary. So I'm not a complete open source zealot. I'm just not and never have been. I don't really see myself ever becoming so despite the fact that the more time passes the more terrified I am of data being leaked out there that I can't get back. You know I mean and I think that that is something that we all feel we all have this sense that despite the fact that Google knows everything about us there is still some data out there that we really don't want them to have or we really don't want bad people to have. And this is especially true with things like passwords. So the latest attack or whatever has been on last pass which is one of the most popular password management services out there. A lot of people use last pass including me up until probably about a year and a half ago or so. And if there's one thing online or one thing that you use that you absolutely have to trust. It's your password manager because it has information to all of the services that you use including things that are so important to you probably like bank passwords tax passwords things like that. Things that it would be devastating if someone's actually had access to. So can you trust services like last pass like bit warden like Google like Amazon. Can you trust these people with your data and the obvious answer has to be no now I know I include a bit warden there and I don't really want to. But since the last pass debacle I've become very distrustful even more distrustful than I was before about someone having access and storing my personal data especially when it comes to passwords and things like that. So what are you to do if you can't trust the cloud I mean I'm using a general word here the cloud to store your data what can you do well the obvious answer is to host as much of your data as possible yourself. And the thing is and the trouble is that this is not not only is it not easy but it's not cheap right it's not something that someone can do for free now that's one of the reasons why so many people use Google why they use last passes because they offer free services and for the most part those services are attractive to people and add on top of that the insignificant cost and you have a service that people want to use. That's not something that you can duplicate with a self hosted service or a self hosted system right at least not easily so what are you to do and there is no easy answer to this question. So what I'm going to talk about today is what I plan on doing and I'm going to be working on this over the next year so my one of my New Year's resolutions I don't usually do New Year's resolutions but one of the things I'm going to be working on in 2023 is securing as much of my data personally as I can so I'm going to look into self hosting bit warden so that I have all of the data on my own computer instead of hosting it somewhere else. I'm going to be looking into hosting as much of my email and digital data as possible myself even if it's not on a server that I can have here at my house. I would still much prefer to have it on a server that I control so I may start up a note or something like that I'm not still still not sure. But what I do know is that the more control I have over my data the happier that I'm going to be now. The big problem here and probably for you to if you decide to do this is that once you've taken on the responsibility of controlling your own data. Anything that goes wrong is no longer something you can blame someone else for so if someone hacks into your Debian based Linux server because you forgot to you know set up a firewall or you used a really crappy password. That's no longer going to be something you can blame last pass or Google for the note even that's on you and that's going to be something that I will also have to struggle with because. It's something that when you're responsible for the security of your data you have to actually be responsible for the security of your data you have to take steps to ensure that the data that you're hosting is going to be as secure as possible. And that's going to be a struggle and I think that's a struggle for a lot of people that they maybe even don't even consider all that much. If you've taken the step of saying you want to have as much control over your data as possible. You probably consider that the hardest and maybe the only step that you have to take right because it is a very long and difficult process if you decide to do this. Whether you're hosting on your on premises at your house in servers or random computers you have laying around your house or if you hire a VPS or whatever. However you decide to do it you may consider that to be the only step you have to take. But there is a constant maintenance that's going to have to go into that process in order to keep everything that you're storing secure no matter where you're just storing it. So that's going to be something else that I'm going to have to look into and learn how to do because to be honest with you I've never done any of the self hosting stuff myself at all. You know I don't know anything about Docker or running in containers or anything like that I just never have looked into it. So it's going to be a learning process and this is kind of the first video I'm going to be making in a series of videos over the next year talking about how I'm securing my data online and how maybe you can learn from both the things that I'm learning but also the mistakes that I will inevitably make. So I'm sure somewhere along the line I'm going to make a stupid you know boo boo and probably expose all of my passwords to the Internet. Hopefully that doesn't work or doesn't happen but you know you'll get the idea. I'm going to kind of document my process of moving as far away from hosting my personal data online as possible or at least storing it on servers that I don't control. I want to have full control over my data as much as possible. Now there's going to be some areas where I'm not going to be able to do that. So the biggest one obviously is Google Docs. I use Google Docs for work. I have to the cooperation that I work for. They use Google Docs and despite my best efforts will not switch away to anything else. So I'm going to be stuck using Google Docs for the foreseeable feature and it's not even as if I could get rid of my Google account anyways. I'm a YouTuber and I have my videos in other places obviously specifically Odyssey but the vast majority of my audience is on YouTube. And I don't foresee that changing anytime soon. So my somewhat reliance or at least my somewhat existence with Google is going to have to remain unfortunately. So that's going to have to stay although I'm going to look into more of distributing my videos elsewhere instead of just Odyssey. I'll look into PeerTube. I'll look into any of the other options out there just to make sure that I have a backup because I also want to have more control over the content that I produce and publish in places. So I want to make sure that if whatever reason YouTube decides they're going to kick me off the platform. I still have a place where I can publish my videos and have people watch them. The biggest problem with that is that sure I can do that but there's still relatively few people on those platforms and I've become somewhat of a I'm not just person when it comes to actually having people watch my videos and I like having people watch my videos. So that's going to be something that I'll have to deal with. That's the reason why I'm not you leaving YouTube despite the fact that I probably should. Right. If you are privacy conscious if you're anti Google anyway leaving YouTube would probably be a good idea but it's not really something that I'm prepared to do. So like I said this is just kind of the beginning step. This is the this is me admitting that there's a problem that I need to take a better look at and discover how I can gain control over my data because this last thing this is really the thing that kind of sparked the idea or sparked the panic really. Because when something like a random picture storage place on the Internet loses your data not that big of deal. You know I don't store any really terrible photos online. So if I had photos stored in this random footage photo storage place that lost all my data not that big of deal. And if a company lost like my username and password to that specific site or if they lost you know my email address or whatever everyone has my email address. I don't really I mean that's not a big deal but the thing about the last past thing is that I have so much stuff stored inside of my password manager that if that were to be compromised I would be screwed and that's the thing that scared me tend to finally doing this. Like if that thing were to be compromised and I trust that word and I trust that word way more than I would trust last past but it's still an online service that I don't control. You know I mean and despite the fact that it's open source and based on open source software I would still prefer to have that control and the last past thing is what has pushed me in that direction. So yeah this is just the beginning of the journey for me if you guys have comments on this you guys can leave them in the comment section below I'd love to hear from you. Especially if you've taken similar journeys into controlling your own data and stuff like that I'd love to hear from you in the comment section below. You guys can follow me on Master's Honor Odyssey those links to be in the video description you can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linuxcast. Links for Liberapay and YouTube will also be in the video description. Thanks to everybody who supports me on Patreon and YouTube you guys are all absolutely amazing without you the channel does not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very very much for your support. I truly just thank you so much for your support. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.