9/17/2014

Burning Dropbox


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?


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