No access to old shared link from Dropbox

The vulnerability with apps and websites have become a serious issue now. Everyday a new application or the website comes into light that is affected and need patch, even Gmail was affected in the past. Dropbox couldn’t save themselves as well, and required patch to its system.

IntraLink brought the issue in the light that Dropbox shared links are not secure, and it could allow a third party to check the shared documents. Most of the advertiser use search terms to advertise so the relevant ad is displayed at relevant place, and when the keyword or search term is put, it will display the ad there. So, some of the search terms were found as shared link from Dropbox which contains sensitive information. This might happen when a user copy the shared link and put it into the search box instead of the address bar of the browser.

Well, from 5th Many, access to the old shared links have already been disabled, and Dropbox has patched its system, but Dropbox has not confirmed so far that after the patch issue is completely resolved. Might be they are still testing.

If you have a business account with Dropbox, you can turn on the setting which limits the access to team members only, and if you have a consumer account, you need to provide new shared links to those people who you want to share the documents with. These things can help you to protect your documents and file.

There is one more service provider where you data might be at risk according to the recent article published by infoworld that is Box.net, and they were contacted but didn’t hear back. So, if you are one of the Box.net user (whether business or consumer) you can protect your documents by turning on the setting “restrict shared links to collaborators only.” Make sure you do it manually, because its off by default.