Dropbox is a popular service that enables you to store photos, documents and other information in the cloud.  Hackers are claiming that they stole close to 7 million Dropbox usernames and passwords and have posted some of these on Black market websites offering to post more in exchange for bitcoins, the untraceable digital currency.  According to Dropbox, however, the company has not been hacked.   Dropbox says that because people often use the same username and password for multiple accounts, that information was stolen from other, less secure companies and attempted to be used on Dropbox.  According to a Dropbox spokesman, “These usernames and passwords were unfortunately stolen from other services and used in attempts to log in to Dropbox accounts.  We’d previously detected these attacks and the vast majority of the passwords posted have been expired for some time now.  All other remaining passwords have been expired as well.”

TIPS

This is another example of why it is a good practice to have separate distinct passwords and usernames for all of your accounts so that if one company where you have your information is hacked, your other accounts are not endangered.  In addition, as always, if the company with which you are dealing provides for dual factor identification, you should take advantage of this to provide added security so that you would not be in danger of having your account taken over even if someone managed to get your username and password.  Dropbox provides for dual factor identification.  If you use Dropbox and haven’t yet added dual factor identification, here is a link to enable you to set it up for your account. https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/10/have-you-enabled-two-step-verification/