Computing Unplugged: Who holds the encryption keys to the content? Does the consumer and Carbonite have one?

Friend: The consumer has a password, just like in electronic banking. We keep the passwords in an encrypted form on a server that is off the network. The password database is in a separate facility with 24-hour guard and fingerprint ID access. Only my co-founder, Jeff Flowers, and two techs who have been with us for over 15 years have access to the database server. Internal procedures are modeled after the internal procedures at one of the major New York banks.

We will be offering the option of user-held encryption keys for customers who have a regulatory requirement (such as healthcare). We won't encourage use of user-held encryption keys for other customers, however, because what others in our industry have found is that when users lose or mis-copy their keys, they are furious when they are told that there's no way for them to get their data back.

Computing Unplugged: What is Carbonite's philosophy on how they would handle getting rid of servers with peoples' personal information on it, whether they needed to get rid of them because of upgrades or other reasons? What happens to the hard drives and how can you guarantee their security if your company fails?

Friend: When a customer simply deletes a file folder from their hard drive, we keep the data for 30 days because often the deletions are accidental and they later want to recover these deleted files. If they want to purge all traces from Carbonite, they can open the Carbonite backup "drive" where the file will be shows as "Original file is deleted".

If you right click and delete the file from the backup, it will be erased from Carbonite and the disk space will be recovered and used for another customer. If a customer fails to renew his Carbonite subscription, we keep the customer's backup on hand for 30 days before deleting it.

Meanwhile we contact the customer several times to tell them that their data will soon be deleted unless they re-up their subscription. If the customer wants all his data purged immediately, they can go into their Carbonite drive, right click on the highest level folder, and delete.

Computing Unplugged: Unfortunately, that sidestepped our real question of what happens if the company closes and servers get sold. OK, well then, let's move on. What are some of the common stumbling blocks that consumers run into when using Carbonite?

Friend: Biggest stumbling block is when people have backed up on an XP machine and try to restore to a Vista machine. Carbonite restores everything, but typically users have different folder names and structures on their Vista machine, so usually there's a certain amount of dragging and renaming of folders after the restore process. Customer support often has to help people through this process, even though it's not really a Carbonite problem. The next release of Carbonite will include an XP-Vista restore wizard that will make this process much easier.