The age of cloud computing and remote storage has many people on-edge. Despite reasonable colocation pricing and virtually no distinction between the threats of a connected independent server and those of a connected server colocation Toronto or some other world city offers, people are apprehensive about keeping private data stored in a facility in some other country. In all honesty it’s a paranoid delusion, and especially so since anyone who ever created an email account has entrusted private data to remote storage. If people want to worry about data security, they need to think about the following threats instead:

Smartphones

Researchers at Georgia Tech in the United States recently found a way to use an iPhone to record keystrokes and determine the words being typed. Smartphones are amazing pieces of technology with built-in features that enable users to perform a wide variety of tasks with them, but these features also allow those with malicious intent to unleash a whole new set of data theft techniques upon an unsuspecting public. It’s smart to stay up-to-date on the latest security threats for smartphones.

Phishing, Vishing, and Smishing

These classic scams are still much more likely to be how data theft is achieved than any other ultra-advanced technique. We can get so worked up over ingenious methods of attack that we can easily forget to take a second-look at emails from banks asking for personal information. Again, through the reliance on mobile devices, we can easily send a text to a number without stopping to make sure we aren’t giving away information that could be used against us.

Social Media

The popularity of social media combined with the amount of personal information inherent to it makes it a gold mine for collecting private data about people. In addition, malicious third party software can autonomously collect this information and use it against individuals or anyone else their information can lead hackers to. If you have qualms over letting private data exist in the cloud, then social media should be your chief concern, not the data centers themselves. Hackers won’t be trying to break into the Facebook mainframe; they’ll be trolling passwords and other basic forms of identity theft.

Social Engineering

At the heart of 99% of cyber crime is something called social engineering. The term is really just a fancy way to describe good old fashioned flimflamming: aspiring cyber criminals contact people in positions of authority and/or privilege and essentially talk their way into getting the vital information they need. Whether it’s getting the office number of an employee or the week schedule of an CEO, social engineering experts are geniuses at filling in the gaps of information they need to execute a worthwhile cyber crime.

In this new era of computing, where the majority of data created and programs used are located remotely in relation to the user, people can get squeamish about where their personal information is going. But the fact of the matter is that the threats to personal information are much more grounded in the devices we use, sites we visit, and con games we allow ourselves to fall prey to.