Hi All,

Thought you may be interested in reading this link regarding Dropbox.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/dropbox-convenient-absolutely-but-is-it-secure/5618

They say:-
“If you gain access to a person’s Dropbox config.db file (or just the host_id), you gain complete access to the person’s Dropbox. Taking the config.db file, copying it onto another system then starting the Dropbox client immediately joins that system into the synchronization group.”

It is possible to lose files that you feel may be secure to a hacker.

Review the risks !!! saving anything across the net does have it's risks.

Alex

There are different levels of 'secure'.

Dropbox was never designed as totally secure file transfer system, so it doesn't surprise me in the least that it has issues like this. I view it for what is it, a file sharing platform.

Gaining access to the config.db file, still requires a degree of hacking and if someone is going to go to that trouble, chance is they'll plant a trojan or malware directly onto your machine or gain access to your whole machine's hard drive without even being concerned with dropbox alone.

On a site where people share and review scripts, the potential threat of someone hacking my dropbox doesn't worry me, when they can only see what I'm sharing anyway.

Treat dropbox as you would a public folder that ANYONE can see and access - don't put files in there people shouldn't see or you don't ever want them to see.

A simple level of tiered security you can employ is to use something like WinRAR and include a password on any files that may have a degree of sensitivity, or authorised access only. Only those people with the password can access them.

After that you can use encryption on public folders put in dropbox with tools like Truecrypt or SecretSync.

If want to even more security, you can use anti virus programs that allow you to run programs in a mode called 'sandbox', or 'virtual machine', where the operating system is isolated for a user or partition a portion of a hard drives volume, place dropbox and its associated folder on that and encrypy the volume, folders and any files shared on it.

Eoin

Let's face it. Nothing is secure. If someone really wants access to your stuff, then they'll get it one way or another. Paranoia over what is and isn't secure only puts grey hairs on your head, so your best bet is to just move forward in whatever you're doing and keep a reasonable level of security without worrying about hackers. If they want you, they'll get you.

I started a dropbox account last year.  A week later I uploaded my first file, a video file.  The next day, my hard drive was blank.  The PC repair shop said I was likely hacked.

Use at your own risk.

Hi All,

Are there any servers similar to dropbox that are totally secure  ???? Probably not.

Just wondering what you guys use when collaborating with another writer ?
Do you just email back and forth ????

Would an FTP site be preferred, with a username/password ?

I guess there is nothing that is really guaranteed, except death and taxes.

Alex

That really sucks, Lon. I would be devastated.

It did suck.  Just a couple week before I'd bought an external drive to make some space on my PC but I hadn't gotten  around to transferring the two most important things -- namely, roughly fifty pics of my daughter, who lives abroad and who I haven't seen in many years, and twelve scritps in various stages of completion.  I ultimately was able to get most of the pics of my daughter back (her mom emailed me some copies) but I had to start the scritps all over again and am still trying to get a number of them up to where they were when I lost them, hence why it's been so long since I've uploaded a script here.