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| Burning Dropbox |
Dropbox drives me crazy. Certain clients love to use it
thinking it provides the security and ability to send taxes and bank statements
for their loan applications. I always work in the format or system the client
is most comfortable. If they want to text, I put on my glasses and text all
day. If they want to meet face to face in their home, that is often the easiest
method to get the paperwork I need out of their hands in one or two sweeps. If
they want to use Dropbox I do it but it is so frustrating. Dropbox seems to
delete files, make them into weird encrypted formats and one day the file is
gone the nest it reappears.
Dropbox was affected by the heartbleed hacker virus. I assume
it has had other security breaches, but like banks they keep it quiet. I have worked for a couple banks over my twenty nine year career in mortgage
banking. When an account is compromised or
a teller steals, it rarely gets in the news. Certain banks fire the criminal employee who
may end up at some other financial services bank. The bank covers the money
loss and tells the customer “it will never happen again.”
In today’s world where we depend on the security and ease
of the internet it is difficult to imagine going back to only handwriting on
paper and United States Postal Service.
What Dropbox does is a single encryption key that employees
can see your files. One must assume that hackers try to contact Dropbox
employees in every method of spam and enticement to access the global
duplication of data. Users can’t read the data of others it is scrambled into
pieces like a shredder does to paper.
Read more here for five suggestions that are better than
superior to and some even cheaper than Dropbox:
If you are a hacker Dropbox and any data storage or cloud
storage would be a great place to steal private information.
One of the signature elements of Dropbox is
global duplication of data information. All uploads are “hashed” with a digital
signature which is checked against all the data from every other user.
If you upload a file that Dropbox has already
viewed, it gives a pointer to the duplicate file chunks rather than your own.
The universal access to data reads the duplicate file.
Dropbox for Teams stinks. Sure the company
added a unified control panel for accounts associated with a business, but is
very limited in practical use. There was no Active Directory or LDAP
integration for single-sign-on. Dropbox
rolled out new software for Teams into Dropbox for Business and added Active
Directory and Single Sign-On one might think they have improved, but no they
have not.
There’s still no content audit or control
mechanism, so users can use “unlimited” online Business storage for whatever
they want, be it personal or sensitive (see “Security”). About the only thing
an admin can do is see who’s sharing what outside the Business and the last
thing they did. That’s not much functionality.
Dropbox really needs to upgrade their systems to
appeal to corporate America. When a system goes down during working hours customers
want answers and processes right away. There is nothing worse than the feeling
that all your hard work has burned up in smoke and disappeared. Dropbox doesn’t
have help information answers to questions readily published. They added AD support. BUT they never answer questions
quickly. There is no link on their website that says contact us here. There is
the banking cop out to type in a tiny box your query and pray they will get
back to you. Employees do not post or use email.
Dropbox is not useful for public links in
business. Dropbox will suspend the use of public
links if a link generates more than 20GB per day of downloads for free users
and 200GB for paid users. Dropbox is terrible with photographs and video that
tend to be much larger images.
Go
to their Facebook business page and there are thousands of people complaining about
lost files and no response from Dropbox. They won’t allow people to write on
their Facebook wall- with good reason – there would be angry and obscene
comments from paying clients. It appears they don’t monitor the Facebook page
as they never respond to anyone. Or perhaps some intern is allowed to post but
never read or answer. Type Dropbox and you will see bloggers and others all
complaining about purchasing a paid service that doesn’t work.
Okay
so stop your whining C. G. If clients want to use Dropbox, you will use it. There
are better services, actually thousands of them. If the client feels safe using
Dropbox, I am going to keep rebooting my computer, clearing the history and
trying again.
My
work email is encrypted and very secure. It is so good at catching spam that
few to zero get through. If I type nine numbers in a row (such as in a social
security number) in the body of an email or as an attachment it places a second
layer of security on the file.
A
couple alternatives to Dropbox:
Google
Drive
Spideroak
Mega
Cubby
Media
Fire
Or
you can bring your box of papers to me and I will copy them, and then scan them
into our system. We handle information that must be kept secure. I see
Borrowers income taxes, bank statements, credit reports and perhaps a window
into their lives more closely than other types of jobs. I will treat my client’s
information with the highest security and respect that they deserve.
Caroline
Gerardo ( C. G. Barbeau)
Eagle
Home Mortgage a Lennar Homes Company
8105
Irvine Center Drive # 500 Irvine California 92618
Also
Newport Beach California 92660
NMLS
# 324982
(949)
637-8190 (949) 784-9699
E fac
855- 883- 4303
Mortgage
Banker here to answer your questions and close your loan
Thank
you for reading. What do you think about Dropbox?
.
