no sane person would ever put some valuable/important things on megaupload
How do we explain to sane, but non-internet-savvy, people what rules they should use to tell "safe" places to store their data from "unsafe" ones.
Megaupload took pains to not show infringing content on their home page and they did not provide a search engine that would return it. I'd ended up at the site several times and, though it set off a few of my red flags, I can't really explain why.
This is what I usually tell non-tech-savy people to do. "Remember to make backups" seems to be too abstract and thus they tend to procrastinate the "make backup" topic away.
"Copy your important stuff to at least one other place, be it an external hard disk, a USB-Stick, a DVD or an online storage service."
And then I usually configure Dropbox for them and show them how to use it. And I tell them not to put sensitive information like online banking PINs on there. And tell them that I can also show them a way to further secure the data with TrueCrypt.
But some are even resistant to this. I don't bother pushing them, because I know they will lose data at some point. When that happens I "told you so" them once and after having a good laugh at their dangling unmentionables I help them setting up backup/redundant storage.
A great answer...but to a slightly different question.
Which, I think, confirms my suspicion that with both financial institutions and websites it's probably impossible to explain to nonexperts how to judge their credibility.
How do we explain to sane, but non-internet-savvy, people what rules they should use to tell "safe" places to store their data from "unsafe" ones.
Megaupload took pains to not show infringing content on their home page and they did not provide a search engine that would return it. I'd ended up at the site several times and, though it set off a few of my red flags, I can't really explain why.