Dropbox admit hack – user accounts compromised

One of the most useful services online, Dropbox have admitted they were hacked. Some account names and passwords have been stolen in the process.

Some users flagged that they were receiving spam associated with only the DropBox account. The company looked into the problems and found that some usernames and passwords stolen from other websites were used to log into Dropbox accounts. The company claim it was only ‘a small number' however.

One of the stolen passwords gave the criminals access to an employee account which contained documents revealing user email addresses. This started the spam problem.

The people affected are from Germany, the United Kingdom and Holland. If you have a Dropbox account in one of these countries we would recommend you change your password as a security precaution.

Dropbox have made a public apology to their customers and have brought some new security measures into play to try to stop this happening again.

There is now a two step authentication system coming into play soon, more details of which will be announced soon. The company are also planning to launch automated algorithms to detect suspicious activity and a new page just to show the logins to your account.

They reiterate that users should take their own precautions, not using the same password for all their online services. Also use a strong password, not ‘password' or ‘1234'.

Kitguru says: Always best using multiple passwords, and never anything easy to hack.

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