Dropbox just reset my user password

Martin Brinkmann
Aug 1, 2012
Updated • Dec 26, 2012
Internet
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20

I check my emails first thing in the morning to make sure I do not miss anything important right away. Imagine my surprise when I received an email from the Dropbox team notifying me that my Dropbox password had been reset.  I first thought that Dropbox had been hacked and the team decided to play it safe and reset all user passwords. Then I read on and noticed that this was not the case. According to the email, no suspicious activity was discovered, and the only reason for reseting the password according to the email is that some users use the same password on multiple services.

Hi Martin,

Recently, passwords have been stolen from some Internet services. This is a problem because many people use the same password on multiple services, which is unsafe.

As a precaution, we’ve reset your password and you can create a new one here.

We haven’t detected any suspicious activity in your Dropbox, but we’re proactively taking steps to keep users safe.

We know it’s easy to use a single password across different websites, but this means if any one site is compromised, all your accounts are at risk. If you’ve ever used the same password for more than one website, you should create new unique passwords for each of them. Tools like 1Password do this for you and can help make your accounts safer.

Best,
- The Dropbox Team

I verified both links in the email and they are both pointing to Dropbox.com, which eliminates the possibility of a phishing attack. One links to the blog for additional information, the other to the reset password page on the site.

According to the blog post, not all Dropbox passwords have been reset, but users who have not changed their password in a long time or have a commonly used password are affected by this.

dropbox active sessions

Dropbox furthermore has improved security significantly. The company has introduced a page that highlights all active logins to the account and will furthermore integrate two-factor authentication to Dropbox in the coming weeks.

The blog post addresses the spam mails that some Dropbox users have received in the last two week period. According to Dropbox, attackers managed to get hold of an employee's Dropbox account that contained a document with user email addresses.

Resetting user passwords when there is no sign of a security breach or misuse is a bold move that is certainly going to irritate part of the userbase that is affected by this. When you look at the comments on the blog you will notice that many are furious about the change, with some even expecting a cover-up of sorts.

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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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