A Digital Buying Guide?
In Canada, the trade war has sparked a lot of careful shopping, reading labels, and avoiding US products. There is also a significant drop in flights and travel to the US. But when it comes to our digital products that we use daily, we’re not seeing a shift.
I think there’s a good explanation we might be defaulting to business-as-usual when it comes to our data. Switching to buying Mexican or European fruit, for example, is not nearly as disruptive as trying a new email provider or cloud storage service. Most of our office software, cloud infrastructure, and communication tools are designed to have vendor lock-in. Also, I don’t see many people talking about data sovereignty. I don’t imagine most people are even thinking about the impacts of foreign control on their data and considering the Canadian sovereign alternatives, so it’s no surprise that there isn’t a lot of interest in shopping around.
I recently discovered Sync.com, which is a 100% Canadian alternative to Dropbox. I signed up to find that they don’t have a Linux version. Oh well for me, but a good contender for Dropbox users on Windows or Mac. This could be a quick win for anyone wanting to move their data out of foreign control.
It’s important to understand data residency, where your data resides, and data sovereignty which describes the jurisdiction that governs the data. A Canadian company might control the data but it resides in another country. Or, more likely, your data might be in a data centre located in Canada but the company in control of the data is American. To have both residency and sovereignty is the best way to protect your data. But unlike shopping for groceries, these choices aren’t often clearly labelled.
What do you think about Canadian data sovereignty? Is it worth buying local? How important is this to you? I welcome your input.