How secure is Dropbox

Apreciar

As the title says, how secure is Dropbox. Would folk be confident putting private files in Dropbox.

MX5huggy

Encrypt the files before you put them in therefore it does not matter.

Apreciar

MX5huggy wrote: »

Encrypt the files before you put them in therefore it does not matter.

How and with what, is it difficult.

Darksun

Apreciar wrote: »

How and with what, is it difficult.

Truecrypt would be your best bet, it's straightforward to use and provides a very high level of protection

LincolnshireYokel

Yep, Truecrypt is the way to go.

esuhl

Apreciar wrote: »

As the title says, how secure is Dropbox. Would folk be confident putting private files in Dropbox.

Absolutely not! There was an issue earlier this year when their password system went kaput and exposed all users' file to the world at large:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Dropbox-Accidentally-Turned-Off-Passwords-on-File-Storage-Service-655206/

But (as suggested above), using TrueCrypt works perfectly well and it's dead-easy to use... although I admit that I looked at the lengthy documentation several times before trying it out! I shouldn't have been put off as there are really only a few options and the defaults are sensible if you're not sure what to choose...

buglawton

Doesn't Truecrypt require files to be placed into an encrypted virtual drive? Or can it encrypt each file individually as and when you upload to Dropbox?

esuhl

buglawton wrote: »

Doesn't Truecrypt require files to be placed into an encrypted virtual drive? Or can it encrypt each file individually as and when you upload to Dropbox?

First you create a single TrueCrypt file on the Dropbox drive. Then, you mount it (with TrueCrypt) and it appears mounted with it's own drive letter. Once the "drive" is mounted, you can add/remove files and they're encrypted/decrypted on the fly.

Toxteth_OGrady

Or if you just want to encrypt individual files before uploading to Dropbox use AxCrypt

boxst

Although it somewhat defeats the object of DropBox to use encryption, as that means you can't read it on other devices.

But as above, anything that you can log into isn't secure if the usernames / passwords get leaked.

mr_fishbulb

esuhl wrote: »

First you create a single TrueCrypt file on the Dropbox drive. Then, you mount it (with TrueCrypt) and it appears mounted with it's own drive letter. Once the "drive" is mounted, you can add/remove files and they're encrypted/decrypted on the fly.

The problem with that is the whole container file has to be uploaded/downloaded each time one file is changed. For example I have a 1GB truecrypt container for sensitive docs, if I put a 100K pdf in there, the whole 1GB needs to be uploaded to truecrypt.

Also if you are using this method, you need to turn off the "plausible deniability flag" in truecrypt otherwise it won't change the timestamp on the file when it is updated and dropbox won't know it's changed. See here - http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=2343

boxst wrote: »

Although it somewhat defeats the object of DropBox to use encryption, as that means you can't read it on other devices.

You can use it on the other side if you have the same software you used to encrypt it before putting it in to drop box. But I agree; it isn't a nice, easy process.

A better option would be to use a Dropbox alternative that has encryption built in to the process. Your files are not stored in an unencrypted state on the 3rd party servers (as opposed to Dropbox where their staff could read your files if they wanted to).

E.g. - http://www.wuala.com/en/learn/technology 5GB for free.