October 14, 2014

Dropbox Woes: Lost files and hacked passwords

0  comments

dropboxOh dear. One of the world’s biggest consumer cloud service companies, Dropbox, is in the news for troubles this week. Here’s what you need to know:

Disappearing Files with Selective Sync

Dropbox recently dramatically increased the amount of storage that $99/year buys you, from 100GB to 1 terabyte. Yeah, that’s a lot. But since most of us don’t have a terabyte of storage on our devices, Dropbox created the opportunity to pick and choose what we wanted to store locally and what would only be stored in the cloud on their servers, a feature called Selective Sync.

The problem arose this week when a bug started erasing files of people who were using Selective Sync. Dropbox is working on a fix and offering a free year of storage to the users caught up in this mess.

Hacked Passwords

Yesterday some bad guys posted 400 usernames and passwords they claimed came from Dropbox. The group claims it has 7 million entries. Dropbox swears they haven’t been hacked, and they’ve examined the list and determined that the passwords are expired and old. The problem may stem from users using the same username/password combo for different sites (hey — don’t do that!). But whatever the reason for the problem, you can stay safer (note that I didn’t say “stay safe”) by checking your info at Have I Been Pwned? and enabling two-step verification.

 


Tags


You may also like

Which Password Manager Is Best?

Which Password Manager Is Best?
{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

SUBSCRIBE TO GET YOUR FREE DOWNLOAD

The Little Book of Apps

If you’re looking for technology to make your life easier, start here! Subscribe to our NerdWords newsletter and get instant access to The Little Book of Apps today.

Like everyone else, we have to put the small print at the bottom! But in all seriousness, we respect your privacy and won't spam you. Pinky Promise.

>