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Dropbox Hacked – Best Cloud Storage Has Been Compromised

Dropbox is one of the popular and best cloud storage known to all Internet users and for me that is true. This is why more and more users are utilizing the capability of this online virtual drive application and is even used on most smartphones as additional features. Most Android and even iOS smartphones uses Dropbox services to enable them to store documents, images, files, music file format, and many more. With this kind of service, it enables users to access their files almost anywhere and whenever they need it. However, what will you do and how will you feel if a service like what Dropbox is offering to all users has been compromised? Dropbox Hacked It all started sometime in mid-July wherein most of the Dropbox users complained to the aforementioned best cloud storage company that they were receiving junk or spam emails. So what’s the connection between Dropbox and these spam emails? These users were complaining because they noticed that they were receiving these unwanted emails with the same email account they used for Dropbox. I am also one of the Dropbox users and I usually receive spam emails but I didn’t notice it because I don’t usually go to my Junk mailbox – most of the time I delete them straight away. The problem already reached Dropbox when these affected users sent them the complaint. It was first ignored by the said company, however, everything changed after they released an article on their own blog site last Tuesday (31st of July).  And so I quote:

A stolen password was also used to access an employee Dropbox account containing a project document with user email addresses. We believe this improper access is what led to the spam. We’re sorry about this, and have put additional controls in place to help make sure it doesn’t happen again.

While reading their breaking blog post, I remembered that I was also a Dropbox user and to be honest I really loved the feature or service they offer. It enables me to continue my unfinished work whenever I am at home. It even gives me that convenience for my own blog site because I can store images to it and saves me some bandwidth. And that what made me think if it is still safe to save and store my important files into a company which was considered as the best cloud storage there is.  But then I remembered this one important rule that I always do – DO NOT USE ONE PASSWORD TO ALL OF YOUR ACCOUNTS. You cannot and must not rely your full trust on any system because a hacker will always do his job and that is to make sure he can penetrate and compromise a system, no matter how hard it is or whatever it takes. So be responsible with your own account and if you cannot change your password once in a while, at least don’t make and use the same password with all of your online account. Dropbox plans to add some additional controls to avoid this issue in the future.  But this will surely not guarantee us that everything will be safe and be lax about it. But it is a good thing that the company is taking precautionary measures to counter these unwanted activities from people who wanted to compromise a system.  Some of which they’ve mentioned is that they will put a Two-factor authentication which will ensure that will ensure that the person who will login is indeed the users. The user will be asked two proofs of identity – possibly a combination of password and a code.  Although this is something that they said is still under process.  Another one that I liked is that they are planning to tell the users (probably a notification) to change their password if it hasn’t been changed for a long time.  These are only two solutions that they are looking at as of the moment but there are more. Again, I will always recommend Dropbox and I love their products and idea. But, I always believe that there’s no 100% hacker-proof system so it all boils down to the users itself to do also their job in protecting their own accounts. So if you are a Dropbox users better change your password now and make it a habit. [Source: Dropbox Blog – Security

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