Who owns your online pics and tips on where to store them

If you don’t back up your digital pictures, there’s a good chance you’ll lose them to a malfunction or hackers. Unfortunately, using sites such as Facebook and Instagram may give rise to privacy issues. So what are the best options, asks John Hearne

YOU don’t need to be a tech whiz to understand the importance of backing up your photos. In fact, being a tech whiz can put your digital content in more danger than you would think. Ask Mat Honan. A senior writer with online tech journal Wired, last year hackers got access to his computer and deleted his entire photographic record, including the first 18 months of his daughter’s life.

Honan’s account was targeted for very particular reasons. He was an early Twitter user and managed to secure a three-character handle. It was this that his hackers sought; deleting his computer was mere collateral damage, designed to deflect attention from their true goal. While the blame for the incident falls both on the hackers, and on lax security protocols at Apple and Amazon, Honan readily accepted that his failure to back-up his pictures leaves him shouldering some of the culpability too.