What would you do if Google, Apple and Microsoft closed your cloud accounts without warning?

You know that gut-wrenching moment when you try to access a vital online account and find the service has faceplanted? Perhaps you’re on a deadline but Google Docs is having a little nap. Or you need to check your calendar, but iCloud has nipped out for coffee. There’s a moment of helplessness. Of sheer panic. Yet it subsides the second the service comes back online. Then you forget about it entirely. But what would you do if you kept hitting refresh and that moment of relief never came, because your cloud account had been closed?

Think that could never happen to you? You’re probably right. Chances are your Google or Apple account will outlive you. However, the tech world regularly coughs up a horror story that, if it happens to you, will feel like being smashed in the face by a nasty critter from Alien.

There are tales of authors happily tapping away in Google Docs, thousands of words into a novel. They’re in the zone after months of writer’s block, finally feeling positive about what the future holds. And then – bang – everything is just gone. Or they perform an innocuous action, like the person I recently saw claim their account was closed for the crime of keeping a spreadsheet of movies they’d watched.

And then there’s the disturbing case of the man who fell foul of automation and extreme interpretations of knee-jerk laws. His Google account was shuttered because he sent photos of his child’s inflamed groin to a doctor, and those photos got uploaded to Google Cloud. He was cleared of wrongdoing. The images were never shared publicly. Google didn’t care. The cloud account stayed closed.

Head in the clouds

It’s not just Google. Every so often, I’ll hear from someone whose Apple account has been closed without warning or explanation. Microsoft too. If you keep almost nothing in the cloud, you might shrug. But that’s not most people. Which means your digital life likely hinges on you not tripping automated systems run by corporate giants that don’t care about you. One wrong move – that you didn’t even realise was a wrong move – and you could lose access to services and data you rely on.

Ideally, cloud providers wouldn’t rifle through files without just cause. But they do – and sometimes they get things wrong. That should give you pause. And scope creep is real. CSAM detection is one thing, but corporations are increasingly twitchy about copyright infringement. It’s not hard to imagine an account one day being torched over a dodgy copy of Super Mario Bros. lurking in a long-forgotten folder. If that happens, there won’t be appeals. No humans to speak to. It’ll be ‘computer says no’ and game over.

So how can you protect yourself from your own personal cloud-lockout nightmare, however unlikely it seems? Don’t be complacent. Back up everything that matters. If you already make backups, make sure your system pulls down full local copies, not shortcuts that will vanish if your account does. And test those backups actually work. If that sounds onerous, you needn’t hoard everything, but do safeguard your most important, irreplaceable stuff. Because the cloud is someone else’s computer. And when you keep all your stuff in someone else’s house – and that someone doesn’t give a jot about you – don’t be shocked if, one day, they change the locks and leave you stranded.