Dropbox Urges Users To Change Old Passwords, No Hack Happened

There has been troubling rise of hacking incidents in the past two years or so, so when Dropbox, perhaps the most used cloud storage service in the world, starts sending prompts for users to change their passwords, there is naturally no small amount of worry spreading around. Dropbox does reassure its users that there has been no known intrusion or compromise. They're just taking a precautionary measure considering how old most of the passwords were. And it might be a good idea to change yours today, too.

Actually, there was an incident back in July 2012 where usernames and passwords were indeed believed to have been stolen. Affected accounts were already told to change their passwords back then, but most of Dropbox's users back then weren't exactly affected.

That was four years ago, and Dropbox believes its high time for users to update their passwords, and their practices, to present times. Not all Dropbox users are being prompted to change their passwords. Only those who signed up for the service before the July 2012 issue and have never changed their password ever since.

But even users who didn't get a notice but believe they don't have a really strong password to begin with, should probably use this as an opportunity to join that crowd. You can try thinking up of a newer, stronger password, or take a pick from our top password management services. Whichever path you take, it might also be a good idea to turn on two-step authentication as well at this point.

Online security and safety is no longer something users, even less tech savvy ones, can ignore or defer to services like Dropbox. Each one now has a responsibility to keep his or her online data safe, pretty much like keeping your own physical property safe. It shouldn't take a mass hacking incident to give us a wake up call that yesteryear's security practices, or lack thereof, are no longer sufficient today.

SOURCE: Dropbox