It's 10:47 A.M., Palm Pre owners...do you know where your data is? PreCentral has received a ton of user complaints over the last few weeks that Palm Profiles haven't been backed up as often as they should have. Judging by the number of complaints, the issue seems to be getting worse every day. The problem appears to come from corrupted back-ups, and a lack of internal safety measures designed to prevent said back-ups from damaging the system.

Palm recently issued a statement assuring customers that they are aware of the issue and working on it. No more information is available. AppleInsider likened this case to the Sidekick Data Disaster and the recent loss of multiple Nokia Ovi Contacts. An increasing number of gadgets and services do their computing in the cloud, and Google's upcoming Chrome OS stores virtually all user details there. Cloud computing is hot right now...but is it as safe and reliable as it needs to be?

AppleInsider points out that a data loss in the cloud could turn into a physical data loss. If Google were to lose any Android data, that loss would be synced back into the phones themselves. A nightmare proposition for any handset maker.

Occasional data loss is just one of the hazards of storing data in the cloud. Unfortunately, it's not a risk many of us can take. Data has hard, monetary value. There are many people who cannot afford to gamble with their data, and they're going to demand enhanced security features before they start using an OS like Chrome. There have to be steps that can be taken to ensure syncing with a busted database doesn't wipe the device.