Does Joplin Cloud keep a backup of my notebooks?

As a happy user of Joplin Cloud for the past year, I'm surprised I don't know the answer to this question and I didn't see it clearly answered on the site or in the forums: where is my data kept when I sync with Joplin Cloud?

For example, if I lose all my devices, can I recreate my Joplin notebooks merely by firing up a new Joplin instance and connecting to my Cloud account?

Another way to ask this is: could a hacker, or a government with a subpoena, get access to my notebooks if they had access to the Cloud server?

Yes you can, all the data is in Joplin Cloud

Yes they can, however you can use encryption to ensure that only you can read the data. Without your encryption key the data is unusable.

As for the data retention policy please see here: Joplin Cloud - Help

You'd need to make sure it's really a new instance that hasn't been used previously and does not have any state. Or you may end up deleting your notes in the cloud instead.

As an aside, whilst what @laurent says is perfectly true you must remember that the data on JoplinCloud is not a backup. It is only the method used for your note data to be synced from client to client. If something odd happens and your client is emptied of your notes, that could get synced upwards and onwards. Basically if you also want the safety of having a backup (and if you have not already done so) you should consider using something like the Simple Backup Plugin to keep a local rolling backup archive of your note data for disaster recovery.

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Fully support dpoulton's approach, takes no effort, and let's you keep the backup data somewhere else than on "all the devices" you said you may loose.

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