Tech Talk by Roland Schorr & Tower - Latest Comments on Oh Dropbox, We Loved You Once...

Gerbrand van Dieijen [Visitor] in response to: Oh Dropbox, We Loved You Once...

Gerbrand van Dieijen [Visitor] — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:02:27 +0000

Legal or illegal, if accessing your personal data is possible at the server, someone will do it if the stakes are high enough. What if you're dating the ex-wife of a jealous dropbox employee (an incident that once happened at Google)?

Just use a service that encrypts your data at *client* side. For example:

http://www.wuala.com/en/learn/features/t/2
https://spideroak.com/faq/questions/3/does_spideroak_use_encryption_when_storing_and_transferring_data

Ronald Kunenborg [Visitor] in response to: Oh Dropbox, We Loved You Once...

Ronald Kunenborg [Visitor] — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:50:56 +0000

The DropBox license also covers the use of the "public" folder. Otherwise you could drag something into that and then sue them for publishing it. Bingo, free money.

People tend to focus only on their own limited use of Dropbox, not on all the things it CAN do that need to be covered by the TOS.

Maarten [Visitor] in response to: Oh Dropbox, We Loved You Once...

Maarten [Visitor] — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 20:00:01 +0000

I think they are very clear and Mildred is right:
http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=846

Kelly [Visitor] in response to: Oh Dropbox, We Loved You Once...

Kelly [Visitor] — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 16:24:33 +0000

This is one of the reasons I encrypt the files I store on Dropbox.

testbeta [Visitor] in response to: Oh Dropbox, We Loved You Once...

testbeta [Visitor] — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:21:38 +0000

i always loved DropBox but now i think otherwise i might use box.net btw i am a free user i don't want to pay...:P

Ben Schorr [Member] in response to: Oh Dropbox, We Loved You Once...

Ben Schorr [Member] — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 03:47:11 +0000

""The very words "distribute" and "publicly display" should be all you really need to hear."

Right... because that is what you're asking DropBox to do for you. How do you expect them to do it if you don't give them a license?"

Well, no. I'm asking Dropbox to sync files between MY devices. In order to do that they do NOT have to have access to the files - case in point if I encrypt my data with TrueCrypt Dropbox still works for syncing between my devices (or to anybody else if I gave them my decryption key).

As Ed Bott points out, Dropbox isn't any worse than a lot of other services in this regard. But...those are all services that are not suitable for confidential documents. There are plenty of other files you can happily and successfully use Dropbox or Google Docs or SkyDrive to host.

Lin Mu [Visitor] in response to: Oh Dropbox, We Loved You Once...

Lin Mu [Visitor] — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 03:43:09 +0000

Good article. Yet one thing bugs me. When I read about security or lack thereof, I hardly ever here about solutions.

So … If you use a Mac, and would like easy to use strong encryption. The good folks over at GPGTools have a real workable solution. Yes GPG has been around for a long time, and terrific work is being done. One of the newer additions is “Service Menu” GPG tools it allows one to encrypt or decrypt any file from the service menu. or any text block in any service aware program.

It all comes in a single install. Easy. Free. and auto updates…. head on over and pick it up.

http://www.gpgtools.org/projects.html

(they are working on an iOS version)

Ayman [Visitor] in response to: Oh Dropbox, We Loved You Once...

Ayman [Visitor] — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 03:40:34 +0000

Wow thanks for bringing this to our attention! I'm so pissed! I am even more disappointed that Google Docs has a similar TOC clause because I was going to move everything there and use insynchq for the uploading service. Now I'm not sure what to do....