Dropbox rant

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Spoked Wheels

Legendary Member
Location
Bournemouth
I opened an account with dropbox in 2013, loaded some files and never used it again.

I always use a disposable email address for these type of non personal registrations which I always start with the name of the company / website, in this particular case is dropbox@something.com so all emails received to that account are forwarded to me immediately. In other words this email address is only known to me and dropbox. As it happened I didn't have one single email from dropbox and I cannot remember if I ever got one from them but I guess I did to confirm my registration, standard registration procedure with most websites.

So, I was very surprised to receive several emails to my dropbox@something.com. On examination of the emails it was evident they were spam and also, there was a warning from Gmail about the sender being known to them for fishing sensitive information scams.

In all these years I have used this strategy dropbox is the second company that has failed the test. The first been "Crucial" about two years ago.

I wrote to Dropbox an email reporting the incident and asking whether they had been victims of a hacker or if it was possible there was another explanation as to why spammers had got hold of my email address when only dropbox and myself knew of is existence

2 days later I received the following reply:
"Dropbox Support, Sep 06 12:36 am (PDT):
Hi,

Thanks for writing in. While we'd love to answer every question we receive, we can't get back to you at this time.

If you need to restore a lot of files, please take these steps: https://www.dropbox.com/help/400
Also, check out our help center for solutions to the most frequent questions: https://www.dropbox.com/help

We're sorry for the inconvenience,
The Dropbox Team
"
So, they have not even read the email so that inspire lots of confidence in Dropbox when in need of support - not really.

People use dropbox to keep all kind of files. Personally I would not use dropbox for any sensitive information.

Before you ask, no, spammers could not steal the address from my gmail as I don't have one single email with that address. Will be deleting the one received today as soon as I print it out first.

There is nothing stored on my computer with that address either.

Also, I have not connected to dropbox for 2 years so why I'm getting these spams now.

So, have they been hacked and they are keeping quiet about it? Maybe the don't know their computers were hacked.
Are they selling the email addresses? I doubt it but an employee could be. T-Mobile was victim of an employee selling details of customers to spammers a few years ago.

Anyway, I will continue to stay away from Dropbox.
 

Beardie

Well-Known Member
Get onto Dropbox again. In my experience, first-time email complaints are always answered with a standard reply. This has been true of several unrelated organisations. When I followed it up, I always got a more helpful response second time around.
 
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Spoked Wheels

Spoked Wheels

Legendary Member
Location
Bournemouth
Get onto Dropbox again. In my experience, first-time email complaints are always answered with a standard reply. This has been true of several unrelated organisations. When I followed it up, I always got a more helpful response second time around.
I agree with you but I've lost any trust I had in dropbox so I wont be using their service in the future.
 

Doseone

Guru
Location
Brecon
Have used dropbox for a while with no problems and no spam. Found it really easy to use and would be lost without it. If I have a criticism it's that the 2gb free is pretty mean in comparison with some others.
 

GrumpyGregry

Here for rides.
The minute you put stuff on the cloud you are placing your trust in someone else's security. I'll continue to use dropbox.
 
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Spoked Wheels

Spoked Wheels

Legendary Member
Location
Bournemouth
Have used dropbox for a while with no problems and no spam. Found it really easy to use and would be lost without it. If I have a criticism it's that the 2gb free is pretty mean in comparison with some others.

Well, in that case you have nothing to worry about. However, I have one question, would you be able to pinpoint where a spammer got your email address?
 
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Location
Salford
Spammers / Phishers use programs to combine long lists of words and names and then send mails to a long list of known domains in the hope that some of them turn out to be real addresses.

It could be that your address was "guessed" in this way. They have no way of knowing it's real and they scored a hit until you reply.
 

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
Well, in that case you have nothing to worry about. However, I have one question, would you be able to pinpoint where an spammer got your email address?

No.

Your email address may have been found an email address generating program used by many spammers.

So the arrival of the spam has nothing to do with you or dropbox.

Edit: crossed with Moss above.
 

Globalti

Legendary Member
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.
 
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Spoked Wheels

Spoked Wheels

Legendary Member
Location
Bournemouth
No.

Your email address may have been found an email address generating program used by many spammers.

So the arrival of the spam has nothing to do with you or dropbox.

Edit: crossed with Moss above.
These email addresses are disposable addresses that I can make as difficult to guess / generate as I want. In this case the email address was dropbox.seomething.3digitnumber@something.com so not your everyday email address and pretty hard to generate.
If these emails addresses were as easy to generate as my "real" email address then I don't think I'd bother with them but I have been using them for 10 years and the number of spam email I get is minimum.... so they do work.

As I said before in 10 years dropbox is the second company that I did expect to protect my email address and failed. Of course there are many that you have a good feeling they collect addresses to sell in which case I destroy the address as soon as it fulfil its purpose.
 

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
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.
 
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Spoked Wheels

Spoked Wheels

Legendary Member
Location
Bournemouth
Spammers / Phishers use programs to combine long lists of words and names and then send mails to a long list of known domains in the hope that some of them turn out to be real addresses.

It could be that your address was "guessed" in this way. They have no way of knowing it's real and they scored a hit until you reply.

As I said before, the email address in question does not have my name associated with it at all. Spammer's engines based their source for generating emails on list of names, A full name might be used to generated many email addresses. If they also have a date of birth then they use that as well to generate even more addresses.

In my case, that logic does not apply. I will not give any more information for obvious reasons other than to say I can make an address impossible to generate by the current email generation engines the spammers use. Most of the time I use my own strategy that I can resolve in my head when creating a new address so that I can recall the address again in case I need it. So to summarise I create emails on the spot that fit my on strategy which is not stored anywhere else but my head.
 
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Spoked Wheels

Spoked Wheels

Legendary Member
Location
Bournemouth
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.

Think what you like - I know what I'm taking about. I have years of practice on this and I come from a computing background.... so it's not something like it's new topic to me.

Dropbox might have my email in a mail list or have generated emails to advertise or another purpose... thee are many possible ways to fail to protect my email.

Anyway, you can trust them as much as you want and I respect your choice, so please respect my choice.
 

srw

It's a bit more complicated than that...
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.
 

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
[quote="RRSODL, post: 2642584, member: 200" I can make an address impossible to generate by the current email generation engines the spammers use. .[/quote]

No you can't.

The email address exists in a format known to the spammers, therefore it can be guessed.

You might just as well say you can make your bike impossible to steal.

As regards trusting dropbox, I don't.

But nor do I go for hacking conspiracy theories when another explanation is much more likely.
 
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