Most of the time when we say "Cloud Services", though, it means exactly one specific vendor. If an app is designed to integrate with Dropbox and GitHub, I can't necessarily substitute an alternative, or run my own replacement instance. If a cloud-based solution becomes unavailable because the company is bought out, shut down, drops old API support, or simply because I've stepped onto an airplane, I'm stuck. The cloud is both a convenience and an accident waiting to happen.
My NAS at home has never sent me an email thanking me for participating in an Incredible Journey and disappeared.
If this data is useful, why am I bogarting it? I should be sharing it, as soon as possible. If some ears are too sensitive to see rough drafts, we can use obscurity or permissions to control premature messaging.
It's the same argument as Bus Numbers, or for DVCS, or feature branches. I don't want days or weeks worth of work hanging out on some engineer's system, which can get wet or take a tumble down the stairs on the way to a meeting or stay home for a week while down with the flu.
Backups are for people with a bus number of 1 (ie, mismanaged teams or personal projects).
So you should have a second repository of any data you have in any account, in a different location, provider, hard drive, or whatever. Because it's only a matter of time until you need it.
Firewalls, people.
And yes this has happened to me, coincidentally after a period of travelling.
Some backed up hard drives in my house and a family member's are probably more reliable.
I can tell not everyone feels that way when I tell others that my computer died and they offer sympathy like I just lost a relative. It shouldn’t take more than three hours to set up a machine with your work stuff, or somebody isn’t doing their job.