The cloud is not inherently unsafe, but it is not a magic vault either. If you use your phone for travel photographs, you probably rely on cloud storage more than you realise, without thinking much about it. There’s nothing wrong with that – but it is a good idea to acquaint yourself with the risks of things like weak passwords, shared devices, forgotten accounts, software updates, and so on. If you’re concerned about the safety of cloud storage for your travel photographs, let’s delve into the pros, the cons, and what you can do to keep your photos safe:
The cloud is arguably not as effective as physical copies
Physical copies of photographs aren’t immune to things like getting lost, and they’re a lot more vulnerable to damage than digital images stored in the cloud. However, an increasing number of people are turning to physical rather than digital backups to keep their most precious pictures safe. While photo tiles for your wall can get lost in a move, if you’re careful with them, they can preserve your memories for generations to come with no need to pay a subscription or upgrade your tech. A cloud provider, meanwhile, can shut off access to your entire photo archive forever with a touch of a button over something as trivial as a failed update or a billing issue.
Of course, this shouldn’t be an issue if you keep on top of tech and billing – but why should you have to put in all that extra effort simply to maintain access to your own pictures? An increasing number of people think that you shouldn’t, and are turning to old-school physical solutions instead.
Scrolling fatigue is real
One major issue with cloud storage is that it’s exhausting to scroll through thousands upon thousands of images. The ability to store nearly infinite amounts of pictures and make them accessible everywhere is one of the cloud’s huge advantages over things like physical photo albums – but the flipside of this is that we end up unable to see the wood for the trees. If you’re not prepared to spend hours organising your pictures into albums, dates, subjects, and so on, it quickly becomes impossible to find particular pictures amongst the thousands of icons and thumbnails.
This isn’t an insurmountable problem, though. A lot of cloud storage solutions give you options to highlight, organise, ‘favourite’, and prioritise some images over others. Yes, it takes a little time to curate your collection properly – but it would also take you time to organise all your physical pictures into albums, etc. So, if you’re concerned about digital fatigue for cloud galleries but also don’t want to print everything out, look into cloud storage solutions that allow you to organise and curate your galleries in intuitive ways.
Privacy and security concerns
Cloud storage providers typically invest a lot into security and privacy features – but that doesn’t mean they’re totally infallible. While you can be reasonably assured that top cloud providers are doing everything within their power to keep your photos safe from malicious third parties, there’s no guarantee that this security will stay strong forever. If companies start to fall behind or can’t afford to keep their security protocols strong, there’s a chance that cybercrime may evolve beyond their security measures and put your travel photos at risk. As such, it’s important to keep up to date with how your chosen storage solutions are doing in terms of privacy and security.
Perhaps more concerning to some is the risk to travel photos from the storage companies themselves. Some companies have clauses in user agreements that allow them to scrape image data for AI training and so on, which can be problematic for some. So, if this is a concern for you, make sure to read all user agreements very carefully before signing up for a cloud photo storage service.
Keep your travel memories safe with careful research
As a general rule, cloud storage is a safe choice for travel photos – at least, it is in the short term. It is, however, a good idea to organise your digital galleries for ease of scrolling, and to keep a close eye on how well your chosen solution is holding its own in the cybersecurity space. Be sure to read all user agreements carefully, and print out your most precious and beautiful travel photos so they don’t get lost in the unlikely event that something goes wrong digitally.
