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Tuesday
Jun212011

Dropbox Has Some 'Splaining to Do

A code glitch left the popular cloud storage service, Dropbox without password protection for about four hours on Monday.

During this time, anyone could access any of Dropbox's 25 million user accounts by typing in any password.

The lapse occurred between 1:54 p.m. to 5:46 p.m. PT. According to Dropbox's blog post, "much less" than one percent of its members logged in during this period. However, the company still isn't clear whether any improper behavior occurred during the time. If you suspect any strange activity on your account, you can email support@dropbox.com.

Dropbox encrypts data for its users, which gives the company the power to access its users' data. Most likely, the reasoning behind this is in case a user forgets his or her password. However, Dropbox says the company falsely advertised on its website that only the user could access his own data.

At the time Dropbox countered that it has "strict policy prohibitions" and "access controls" to prevent most of their employeesfrom being able to access user files.

Nonetheless, Monday's problem calls into question the usability of Dropbox.

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