Dropbox lied to users about security, encryption, charges security researcher in FTC complaint

Blogger and security researcher Christopher Soghoian has filed a complaint with the FTC over Dropbox's recent data privacy flipflop. Here's the PDF. [Wired News]

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Anonymous

i’m glad it’s soghoian filing a formal complaint instead of a pile of ambulance chasers just looking for a settlement for something they are otherwise uninvolved in.
but what the hell do i know.
martinbrook

A note to all of the “security researchers” who are complaining that they didn’t know Dropbox had access to their files:

You’ve been running a closed-source binary file you downloaded from Dropbox on your machine this whole time. It could see your files. It could even see the files in other folders, if it wanted to. Heck, it could have been logging your keystrokes for all you know. You were *already* trusting Dropbox.

I would have thought that it was perfectly obvious that Dropbox employees had access to your files, just as it’s obvious that Google employees can read your mail.
Anonymous

@martinbrook There is a difference: if Dropbox were openly malicious, they could mess around on your system (and immediately loose all its business, because some people will find out). If Dropbox stores my files without encryption, then nothing will happen to their business, until something goes wrong.

It’s a lot like the difference between a nuclear plant dropping the waste in your front-yard, or secretly ignoring safety precautions in the hope that nothing goes wrong.

As a customer, I am willing to bet that Dropbox is basically trustworthy (after all, there are about a hundred applications running on my computer with access to my files and an internet connection). But I am not willing to have them needlessly install a big and open cookie jar for hackers, industrial espionage and governments. And I won’t accept lies about their security.