The photos people lose are rarely lost to hackers. They are lost when a phone is dropped in a sink, a laptop is stolen, or an old hard drive quietly dies. The fix is a backup that copies your photos automatically, so it keeps working even when you forget about it.
The one-copy problem
If the only copy of a photo lives on one device, it is a single accident away from gone. The goal is a second copy somewhere else that updates on its own.
The simple setup
- Turn on automatic cloud backup for your phone's photos: iCloud Photos on an iPhone, Google Photos on Android.
- Know the catch: these keep your phone and the cloud in sync, so a photo you delete is removed from both. They protect you from a lost or broken phone, not from deleting something by mistake.
- Add one more copy that is a true backup: a backup service, or an external drive that copies itself on a schedule, so a deleted or changed photo can still be recovered.
Test it once a year
Open your backup and make sure a recent photo is really there. A backup you've never checked isn't a backup yet.
If you would rather not guess, I can set this up with you, make sure it is truly working, and leave you simple notes on how to check it, so your photos are safe and the whole thing makes sense.