Backups and Recovery

This is a letter about lessons learned the hard way. Perhaps one of the most important things to remember in computer administration is to never assume, as I have been. This concerns backups and recovering data.

Whatever backup strategy you have - ALWAYS check that in such an event where you to accidentally deleted a file or renamed it, or it became in some way corrupted, that you can recover that file. In other words, do test recoveries!

As an avid user of Google Drive I know that whenever I work I on a file, I can see the revision history for that file and can recover it to any prior change in the past. What I had assumed was that this applied to all files and not just Google's own docs, sheets, etc. After contacting Google concerning the need to recover a bunch of non-Google files stored on Google drive, they informed me that they are not a backup solution and that those files cannot be recovered.

Currently I'm looking into backup solutions that have revisioning (the ability to recover a file to any prior change). One of the cheapest and well-known solutions seems to be Carbonite, but I would be interested in what other people use and suggest.

Final note. The proper backup solution is the 3-2-1 rule.

You should have 3 backups,

You should have backups on at least 2 types of media,

You should have one backup off-site.

In other words, you could have one backup on your computer, a second backup on a USB Drive, and a third backup in the cloud.

Auto Form Completion Issue

I just found out about a very disturbing issue.
If you use the auto form completion when visiting web pages, it is very possible for any site to get all of your auto form completion information: e.g., your complete name, full address, but also credit card information!!!
Even if the site is, say, a blog that is asking only for your name, could have invisible fields that accept any or all of the other form data, and you wouldn't know that you just gave that information away.

Don't believe me. Although for security reasons you shouldn't do this, but the non-malicious hacker who discovered this has made the following website where you can test what information you browser is giving out.

Prior to filling out the form, though, I would go into my browser's setting and turn off the auto form completion option. You are giving him all your auto fill information. We can only assume he is not storing any of this information.

This form is very simple. It just asks for your name and email address. But after you hit submit you will be presented with all the information, for which your browser was queried.

https://anttiviljami.github.io/browser-autofill-phishing/

The effected browsers are: Chrome, Safari and Opera. I would advise turning off the option in any browser you use.