>And lets face it, we (startups) would be totally f'd if users didn't become entirely dependent on our services early doors, perhaps even pre-biz model.

I (and many other people) try to educate users not to do this. It's an uphill battle, most people are not interested until the day they lose a bunch of their data when some startup webapp they uses has burned through all their cash and closes down. This is becoming increasingly common though, so I think people are starting to realise that they can't trust cloud services/web apps. I'd like to think raising awareness will help end the trend towards centralised computing that denies users control of their data, but most people still don't even back up their local files, so…

These kinds of shutdowns are useful examples for the next time I'm having this discussion with somebody. Although I'd rather a bunch of people didn't have to lose data I feel nothing will change until this happens a quite a few more times with bigger sites.

Which is to say, I'm afraid I hope you are "totally f'd" because web startups are a malign force when it comes to data security. It's nothing personal…