Mega is opening its beta doors to everyone on Windows 10 PC and Mobile.

The privacy-focused cloud storage service Mega has been testing a new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) version of its app for the past several months in closed beta, and now it's opening up to everyone. While still technically in beta, the app is now available for anyone to download (via Aggiornamenti Lumia) and test on Windows 10 PC and Mobile.

Much of what you would expect from a cloud storage app is here in the Mega Privacy (beta). There's a Cloud Drive section of the app that details all of your stored files, along with a Rubbish Bin that handles all of your deleted files. A separate Transfer Manager area will let you manage and monitor downloads and uploads. The app can also automatically upload photos by toggling on a dedicated option in the settings menu.

To recap, Mega is a service that strives to provide secure cloud storage by encrypting and decrypting data on your machine. Theoretically, this makes your files more secure because Mega itself doesn't have the ability to decrypt your files only your machine and recovery key can do that.

If you want to try out the UWP beta app, you can grab it from the Windows Store now. Mega's old Windows phone app, designed for Windows Phone 8 and 8.1, is also still available should you need access to it.

Download Mega Privacy (beta) from the Windows Store

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Mega's beta cloud storage app for Windows 10 now open to ... - Windows Central

August 1st, 2017 by Adam Armstrong

Today Morro Data introduced two new service offerings that aim to replace the need of having a local NAS, CloudNAS and CloudNAS Business. According to Morro Data, these new service offerings can deliver the benefits of cloud storage with the performance and reliability of local NAS, all in a cost-effective manner. Morro states that the solutions will save users productivity while operating costs by as much as 80%.

Founded by Paul Tien (founder of ReadyNAS, acquired by NETGEAR) and his core team, Morro Data is attempting to revolutionize storage for Small- and Medium-Businesses (SMBs) with simple, fast, affordable, enterprise-class cloud storage and accelerated file distribution. The heart of Morro Datas services is CacheDrive, a cloud storage gateway, and Morro Storage, built on Amazon S3. Files are stored in the cloud, cached in the gateway, and synced globally.

Aimed at prosumer, SOHO, and SMB markets, the new solutions offer several benefits including the elimination of maintenance, infinite capacity, and plug and paly setup. Morro also offers enterprise-class storage features with the on-demand file performance of an on-premise NAS system, something that would cost smaller end users a premium to have in their NAS. Morro Data works with common cloud storage options, meaning users can keep the storage solutions they have.

The two solutions announced include:

Morro Data

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Morro Data Announces CloudNAS | StorageReview.com - Storage ... - StorageReview.com

A bipartisan bill, the ECPA Modernization Act, has been introduced that would update communications privacy law to protect cloud storage. It is the latest effort by the Senate to address the issue after the House voted overwhelmingly to protect older data.

In the previous Congress, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa.) pulled an Electronic Communications Privacy Act update bill from the committee's markup agenda after "poison pill" amendments threatened to expand the bill into areas that neither of its co-sponsors wanted it to go.

That baseline bill, which passed the House 419 to zero, would have updated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to provide protections for cloud storage by requiring a probable cause warrant for accessing information in the cloud and extending the protections to emails and other content stored over 180 days (currently no warrant is required to access those).

"Americans dont believe the federal government should have warrantless access to their emails just because they are 180 days old, Lee said in a statement on the new bill. They dont believe the government should be able to always know where you are just because you are carrying a cell phone. It is long past time that Congress updated our federal laws to better protect Americans privacy.

Americans expect and deserve strong, meaningful protections for their emails, texts, photos, location information and documents stored in the cloud," said Leahy.

Leahy helped write the original ECPA law and has said no one anticipated the way communications would be transmitted and stored.

In the digital world, Americans deserve the same privacy protections that we have for our papers and personal information in the physical world," said Adam Brandon, president of free market, small government group Freedomworks. "Senator Lees efforts to reform ECPAs outdated standards will restore the protections that our founders enshrined in the Constitution. Im glad to see Sens. Lee and Leahy's continued leadership on this important issue.

Internet-era privacy reforms are long overdue and we commend Senators Lee and Leahy for their bill to clearly extend Fourth Amendment protections to emails and geolocation information stored in the cloud," said Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communcations Industry Association. "As most individuals communications are now stored online, law enforcement should obtain a warrant before demanding access. This principle is equally true for the intimate information contained in users digitally stored location data. The Lee-Leahy bill will ensure that the Constitutions protections for individual privacy are reflected in how information is stored and accessed in the 21st Century.

ECPA was enacted long before many of us knew what email was, let alone used it, and over 30 years later it is woefully out of step with our everyday world of communicating through connected devices and cloud computing, said Andy Halataei, SVP for government affairs for tech trade group ITI. Electronic communications contain the most sensitive details about our lives, but unlike a filing cabinet or desk drawer in our homes, the government can access emails and other online content without a warrant after 180 days. Like ECPA reforms unanimously passed by the House earlier this year, Sens. Lee and Leahys bill reflects how we use cloud services to communicate by granting our electronic communications the same Constitutional protections enjoyed by the papers and effects we keep in our homes.

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Senate Resurrects Cloud Storage Protections Bill | Broadcasting ... - Broadcasting & Cable

Federal data center operators face a major challenge. The amount of data they must store is growing rapidly, and applications that rely on this information to provide new capabilities such as data analytics and the Internet of Things require reliable, ready access to it.

Many agencies are implementing an innovative solution to this problem: hybrid cloud storage. By adding cloud services to their other storage components, such as flash arrays and hard disk drives, data center operators address not only the challenges they have now, but also those theyll face in the future.

Hybrid cloud storage provides the flexibility and scalability that data centers need for heavy workloads, while delivering optimum availability. Advanced storage management solutions take the burden off IT staff to make sure that data goes where it should.

Check out the infographic below to learn how hybrid cloud solutions provide an innovative answer to your most challenging storage questions.

CDW's innovative solutions and services can help your organization solve its storage challenges.Find out more atCDWG.com/datacenter.

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Hybrid Cloud Gives Government Flexibility for Storage Needs [#Infographic] - FedTech Magazine

Privacy in the cloud was a hot topic well before it became known that the U.S. government had partnered with some of the biggest names on the Internet to collect user data. Whether for hunting would-be terrorists or selling skivvies, data has value and somebody wants yours.

The problem with privacy is that as fascinating and important a topic as it might be, slogging through the thick soup of assurances and exceptions typical in most privacy policies is a good cure for insomnia. To help lessen the load, Cloudwards.net decided it was time to address the subject head on.

Read on to learn more about what to look for in a privacy policy and how much it all matters.

Dont mistake cloud privacy for cloud security. While good security can help ensure your privacy, security is more about preventing illegal access to your content. Privacy, on the other hand, is about restricting legal access: how the cloud provider can and cant use your data, and who they can and cant share it with.

A privacy policy, by definition, is an agreement by which the company holding your data must tell you what data gets collected and how it gets used. In general, such policies are considered standard practice if a company collecting the data has enough information to identify who you are. However, laws mandating these policies vary from country to country.

Since most cloud storage and backup companies are based in the United States, were going to focus our attention there.

Surprisingly (or not), the United States doesnt have a single federal law that states companies collecting data must have a privacy policy. However, based on a subset of federal, state and international laws, the FTC developed a best practice guideline for businesses to follow called the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPS).

There are five core principles businesses are encouraged to follow:

That last point might be a bit confusing. In a nutshell, while the FTC doesnt directly regulate privacy, should a company be caught violating its privacy policy by using your data in a way that it said it wouldnt, you can sue them and the government can fine them.

Of course, remember that technically FIPPS are guidelines, not law. At the same time, FIPPS, while not legally binding itself, is based on a broad set of laws that include:

These laws give you an avenue to seek redress if your information is used improperly. All of this is to say that you can generally take a privacy policy at its word. So, thats step one.

Any good cloud storage or backup privacy policy is going to tell you:

To illustrate with a policy that hits all of these points, were going to use Carbonite (read our Carbonite review for more information), a backup provider, as an example. While not without its moments, the Carbonite privacy policy provides one of the friendlier reads of any privacy policy weve analyzed. Any policy that doesnt take seven shots of espresso and a law degree to interpret is okay in our book.

Following a quick introduction affirming its respect for user privacy and establishing that it wont use your data for any other means thats described in the policy, Carbonite launches a rundown of the points listed above. The policy tends to go back and forth a bit, so to keep things simple weve extracted the relevant parts for you.

No surprise, Carbonite collects information like your name, address and email. If you sign up for the service, it also includes your billing information. Carbonite also monitors your website visits and pulls some information from your device. This includes the usual tracking cookies and logging your IP addresses, browser type, browser language and activity dates.

As a backup service, Carbonite also collects file system information from your computer. This includes:

And of course, it stores your data, too, which gets kept in secured data centers.

Carbonite labels the information it collects as either account information (name, billing information, etc.) and diagnostic information (IP address, file system information, etc.). The purpose of account information is primarily for identification and billing. It would be hard to run a subscription service without it. Diagnostic information is used several things. In part, thats analytics and customer support. Having your device information helps Carbonite better help you.

However, its also used for marketing. Carbonite doesnt state what specific marketing purposes it has in mind. At the very least, youre going to start seeing Carbonite ads pop up around the Internet.

On top of that, Carbonite gives itself leeway to share your information with third parties, whether for analytics, management, support or marketing:

Carbonite may also use Your Account Information and Diagnostic Information, and share such information with contracted third parties that perform functions on Carbonites behalf and under Carbonites instruction, in order to perform analytics and assist with customer support, account management, and our marketing efforts.

Carbonite does affirm that any third parties your information is shared with must abide by the terms in its privacy policy. Such statements should be standard practice. If a service doesnt explicitly make that connection, stay away, although no examples come to mind.

As far as your files content itself, Carbonite states that its employees will not view the contents of Your encrypted stored data, which is hosted within the United States and/or internationally with third-party cloud storage providers, without Your consent (sic).

That said, there is one big exception to this, which are legal matters: Carbonite may disclose Your information if such action is necessary to comply with applicable law or to enforce Carbonites Terms of Service (sic). So, if the government comes calling with a warrant or Carbonite decides to sue you for breaching its services terms, all bets are off.

Collecting information for billing and support is a necessary part of providing a subscription service like cloud backup. Collecting information for marketing is not.

People can have varying attitudes towards targeting online marketing that uses their personal information. For some, its a way of discovering products they might be interested in. For others, its an invasion of privacy. In fact, numbers from a Pew Research study indicated that 28 percent of Americans have used the Internet in some way to block or avoid advertisers.

If youre anti-marketing, the good news is that Carbonite follows suggestion two of the FIPPS by giving you the ability to opt out of having your information used for that purpose. There are a few different ways you can do this, but the easiest is to just email privacy@carbonite.com. If you dont, the company assumes youre fine with it.

Additionally, as Carbonite notes in its privacy policy, you can set your browser to reject cookies in order to curb targeted marketing.

Carbonite takes an additional step in protecting user privacy by complying with two privacy shield frameworks designed to secure transatlantic data transfers: the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor Framework.

These two protocols were created by the the U.S. Department of Commerce, the European Commission and the Swiss Administration to give companies guidance on how to protect the personal information of their users, plus some safeguards against the U.S. improperly using data and routes for legal action in case of violations.

Both frameworks are completely voluntary. Both are also relatively new, with the EU-U.S. agreement receiving approval in July, 2016 and the Swiss-U.S. agreement in January, 2017. Adherence relies on self-regulation on the part of the company. It also requires a public statement in the companys privacy policy that it agrees to the frameworks terms.

Once a company joins, commitment is enforceable by law. Given that the joining is voluntary and subjects the joining company to additional legal trouble once joined, finding a statement of adherence makes for a welcome indication of a U.S.-based company stance on user privacy.

You can check if your cloud storage or backup provider has been certified in either framework by visiting the U.S. Department of Commerces Safe Harbor website:

Privacy policies are legally binding, which is important to understand. True, such privacy laws in the U.S. havent been enough to hinder government surveillance programs, but in most cases you can rest somewhat easy that your information isnt going to be used in ways you dont want it to be, especially if you opt out of marketing.

That said, the law can be a tricky thing and doesnt always favor the consumer over the corporation. Given that, the best rule of thumb is for private citizens to take control of their own privacy.VPN services are a good first step. They can be used to spoof your IP address and location to counter targeted marketing, government surveillance and hacking activities. There are many great VPN options for consumers out there, which you can read more about in our 2017 guide to finding the best VPN.

If cloud-stored metadata and file content is a concern, consider a zero-knowledge provider. Such providers let you create your own encryption key that only you know. Without access to that key, the company holding your content cant decrypt it, even if men in black suits come knocking.

Carbonite, in case you were wondering, does let you set up your own private encryption key.

Many other Cloudwards.net online backup favorites, including IDrive, Backblaze and CrashPlan, do too. As far as cloud storage, our article on the best zero-knowledge cloud storage services will give you some nice alternatives to services that arent zero-knowledge, like Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive.

Other steps you can take include:

Combined with making sure the privacy policy of the cloud service you choose hits all the right points, these steps should help ensure your private information stays that way.

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Have some privacy concerns of your own? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading.

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Cloud Storage Privacy Policies: What It All Means - Cloudwards