Dropbox rant

[Spoked Wheels]

You know.... you are completely correct. Happy now?

 

[Spoked Wheels]

[QUOTE 2642657, member: 259"]You should ask for your money back! [/quote]

Excellent idea.... considering I never paid a penny

 

[ASC1951]

If you're not paying for a product on the internet, then you're the product. If all they've got on you is an email address, then they'll sell that.

Not necessarily. A large number of Dropbox free users do move on to paid-for capacity, which in the growth phase may easily be enough to sustain the business. Given that Dropbox' whole justification is secure storage, it makes no commercial sense for them to sell your email address to spammers. And the evidence is that they don't.
I have had a Dropbox account for several years and have never received a single piece of spam that could have been triggered by them.

 

[Edge705]

Im assuming you have access to something.com? I do the same I know exactly where my spam comes from but even so companies you give the email to will deny compromising your email address. So here's how I get around it. Take my paypal address its possible someone may guess my paypal address and send something to it however at the engine end (where the email is routed) I set a rule to reject (not delete) any emails sent to me@paypal.com with the exception of emails sent form the genuine paypal correspondence address. Therefore any email sent to me@paypal.com will receive an undeliverable reply and eventualy their automatic software will delete that email address from their spam list. So in short my email engine will only allow email through which has originated from the genuine paypal correspondence address. I do this for all my online activity.

 

[Spoked Wheels]

Not necessarily. A large number of Dropbox free users do move on to paid-for capacity, which in the growth phase may easily be enough to sustain the business. Given that Dropbox' whole justification is secure storage, it makes no commercial sense for them to sell your email address to spammers. And the evidence is that they don't.
I have had a Dropbox account for several years and have never received a single piece of spam that could have been triggered by them.

I can see where you are coming from and that is the main reason of my surprise. But the vast majority of people would not have a clue if it was dropbox , any other business / website or any other form of stealing your email address. 99.9% of spam I get comes addressed to my "real address" This is because either the spammer guessed my address correctly or they stole it from those endless chain that were some popular at some point ( forward this email to 10 friends if you are still alive) etc. I don't get spam from companies, with the exception of the 2 I already mentioned. If you sign up for a dodgy website to be able to download a manual or something then you can be sure that address will be sold so I destroy it immediately.

So when you say I have never received any spam from "THISCOMPANY" you have no way of knowing if that particular address a spammer got it from "THISCOMPANY" unless you give every company you register with a different address and you can identify which is which.

I'm not saying that dropbox was sending me spam, I'm saying I registered with dropbox with an email address that nobody else has and yet I'm been offered pills to loose weight by emails sent to the address I gave dropbox. Is that clearer? Now, the address is made up of several segments that I create according to some criteria.

I find it almost comical that people defend dropbox without having evidence their emails have not been made available to spammers, regardless of the way in which that happened. If I registered with my real address or any address that I use a lot then I could not pinpoint dropbox because this address could be stolen from anybody.

For me this is not a big issue because I destroy the address in question and the problem ends there. However, I'm glad I have not used their services since that one time and even happier to know better now not to use the service again.

Much bigger companies have been victims of hackers and yet Pale raider is almost certain dropbox is not

 

[Spoked Wheels]

Im assuming you have access to something.com? I do the same I know exactly where my spam comes from but even so companies you give the email to will deny compromising your email address. So here's how I get around it. Take my paypal address its possible someone may guess my paypal address and send something to it however at the engine end (where the email is routed) I set a rule to reject (not delete) any emails sent to me@paypal.com with the exception of emails sent form the genuine paypal correspondence address. Therefore any email sent to me@paypal.com will receive an undeliverable reply and eventualy their automatic software will delete that email address from their spam list. So in short my email engine will only allow email through which has originated from the genuine paypal correspondence address. I do this for all my online activity.

I'm glad to read you do the same and understand the issue here. Some people cannot grasp the concept.
Yes, I could indeed take the steps you mention here but my issue here is the trust has been broken so I'd rather destroy the address in question and never use the service of dropbox again.

I agree that companies will deny not protecting your email address. They make an effort to protect your password by encrypting it but they don't encrypt your email address.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I am rueing the day I allowed my son to put Dropbox on my phone; I immediately started being bombarded with spam texts and several previously dormant applications like Facebook started opening up, it was a complete nightmare. I have deleted Dropbox and all the other garbage and now it is restored to a simple device for phone calls and the occasional business email or text to family or colleagues.

I have Dropbox on my phone. My phone has never behaved in the way described. Configuration is key.

 

[Leedsbusdriver]

Seems like dropbox know about it.
https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=97303

 

[ASC1951]

.... 99.9% of spam I get comes addressed to my "real address" This is because either the spammer guessed my address correctly or they stole it from those endless chain that were some popular at some point ( forward this email to 10 friends if you are still alive) etc. ....
I find it almost comical that people defend dropbox without having evidence their emails have not been made available to spammers, regardless of the way in which that happened. If I registered with my real address or any address that I use a lot then I could not pinpoint dropbox because this address could be stolen from anybody.

For me this is not a big issue because I destroy the address in question and the problem ends there. However, I'm glad I have not used their services since that one time and even happier to know better now not to use the service again.

I still reckon that you are making a big fuss about a small problem.

FWIW, I don't get any spam at all. From anyone. Regardless of what 'dodgy websites' I may have poked about in. That's because I use an ISP which has an effective filter.

 

[Spoked Wheels]

Seems like dropbox know about it.
https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=97303

Thanks for the link. I'm not surprised at all. Of course they are going to deny it, only the minority can figure out they are at fault.

I still reckon that you are making a big fuss about a small problem.

FWIW, I don't get any spam at all. From anyone. Regardless of what 'dodgy websites' I may have poked about in. That's because I use an ISP which has an effective filter.

Great if your isp cut the spam.
You have no idea if spammers got your email address you have registered with dropbox but you are defending them. Mmmm

This is my last post on the subject. I had my rant and one poster understood the problem. Another provider evidence I'm not the first person to experience the situation.

Cheers

 

[Edge705]

Referring to the original post I would register a new email with dropbox and wait for that to get spammed then you will know for absolute certain if they are compromising your details (assuming you select the privacy setting on dropbox) Alternatively don't bother with dropbox at all

 

[Edge705]

I still reckon that you are making a big fuss about a small problem.

FWIW, I don't get any spam at all. From anyone. Regardless of what 'dodgy websites' I may have poked about in. That's because I use an ISP which has an effective filter.

I find this hard to believe, if spam detection was that good, then you will be losing important emails as well but in defence of your statement spam filtering is getting much better at the ISP end

 

[ASC1951]

I find this hard to believe, if spam detection was that good, then you will be losing important emails as well but in defence of your statement spam filtering is getting much better at the ISP end

I'm with PlusNet. I get at most one spam email a month. When I joined I did check a couple of times whether their filters were trapping genuine emails which I needed to see, but they hadn't; so now I don't even bother checking.
Going back to RRSDOL's concerns - if my set-up ensures that I don't get any spam, why should I care whether someone has guessed/hacked my Dropbox email address? It's right down the list of stuff that actually matters.

 

[subaqua]

I am going to buy shares in a tinfoil company . I have a feeling they may rise in value shortly.

 

[Spoked Wheels]

You keep on saying dropbox failed to protect your email address.

Almost certainly not the case.

The email address was most likely 'guessed' by the spammers.

@Pale Rider

I just wanted to revive this topic for you to see that your "Almost certainly not the case" must start with a big ALMOST

The Dropbox forum has a topic "Why was my email leaked?"
Andy Y, the super user, replied to the first complain with a nearly identical reply you posted here. All very understandable but in my case an others I read about, no more than nonsense talk.
You will need to read the thread https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=97303 to see they do have a problem and my email address and those of other people are being targeted by shttp://www.cyclechat.net/threads/dropbox-rant.139074/pammers. The problem here is that most people cannot tell where the spammers got the address so they assume the spammer use software to generate their email addresses. Others are simply too blind to see the problem.

I also posted in that forum but on a new topic. Andy Y reply was this time "I can't eliminate the possibility of them being leaked, as no matter how tight the security, leaks are always a possibility (in anything, not just here). However, I can say that Dropbox doesn't sell emails to spammers."

Today I got this email from them "Thanks for sending in your report. We take these spam reports seriously. Back in July 2012 we reported that certain user email addresses had leaked and some users had received spam as a result."

Dropbox are not protecting my email address ans spammers are enjoying the benefits.