HomeDeLaPot

One takeaway: a cloud account isn't a sufficient backup on its own. If you have to log into Apple/Google to download your files and photos, then they're at risk. Make regular backups to an external hard drive or something, and ideally have your stuff automatically back up to a NAS somewhere as well.

Also, after reading this I'm going to have to think about what would happen if someone stole my phone. I take it everywhere with me. It's not an iPhone, but it's still worth a few hundred dollars and it has all kinds of data and logged-in accounts on it. I assume if it was stolen at gunpoint, I wouldn't be in a position to refuse to unlock it and unlock some apps/accounts.

muppetman
Exactly this. I have Google photos and I use it all the time, for every photo/video I take. But I also back up everything I can using the [gphotos-sync](https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync) python script. As it says, it's not the 100% quality in either photo or video, but it's still the memories.

Please if you aren't backing up your cloud storage photos/important files, stop reading HN and go and set it up now.

I can recommend backblaze for cheap reliable storage and the restic backup client which is brilliant (a single, small binary). There's also rclone, or even the backblaze cli client. [Sorry I sound like a Backblaze shill!]