The big swindle was convincing all the decision makers in municipal governments and mid-size companies that it's "cheaper" than upgrading their servers. "It's okay, it's just all the data of your entire business. How could that possibly ever be ransomed back to you?"

I use both cloud and local storage. The cloud storage comes included with software that I use.

This is kinda ignorant of the obvious facts. * Cloud storage companies can most probably secure your data beter than you can. * Hard drive on your desk or car is not accessible to you from anywhere. Cloud storage is. * If you're a company and your cloud storage provider fucks up and leaks or destroys your data, you can sue the shit out of them which (in an ideal world) should cover your losses. * It's all great to only count the cost of the drives, but if you're a company you also get rid of having to pay many high wage employees, building your own infrastructure and so on. Division of labor is a thing. Large companies aren't large and succesfull because they don't know how to manage their finances.