Tag Archives: Dropbox

Cloud Storage, Dropbox, Encrypt Dropbox Folder, Encryption, Keep Safe Online, Privacy, Security, Security Questions, Strong Passwords, TrueCrypt, TrueCrypt

Encrypting Your Stuff – Create a TrueCrypt container for DropBox Part Two

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This is the last post on encryption for a while. Today we’re going to show you how to lock up your DropBox storage folder, both online and on your computer.

(In case you don’t know about DropBox, you should really check it out. We’ve written several posts on this free and very cool service so search our site or head over here and sign up for your free 2 gigs of space. Here’s how DropBox works:  Post 1  Post 2   We’ve also written about how Dropbox can ‘save your bacon’. It really can! Here’s  a link to that post: How DropBox can Save Your Bacon)

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DropBox – Make sure you encrypt your stuff.

In spite of what DropBox says about its encryption and the safety of your files in its Cloud, don’t believe it. At the drop of a hat, DropBox will open up your private files to anyone who asks. Anyone with a badge that is. What’s the problem with that? We’re all for law and order but we don’t think anyone should be able to go through your personal files without you knowing about it. Even if no one in authority has an interest in your stuff, the employees of DropBox can and do sift through your files on a regular basis. Microsoft does this too, this kind of thing is not limited to DropBox. Let’s just say that everyone does the same thing.

Once you’re clear on that, here’s how to keep your information private. You made an encrypted container right? We showed you how to do that in our last post. Here’s the link in case you missed it: Encrypting Your Stuff – Create a TrueCrypt container for DropBox. You should make more than one container. Instead of putting everything in one locked volume, consider making several. Let’s say you make one for passwords, one for personal photos, one for videos, one for financial information, etc. That way, you don’t have to upload a massive folder every time you do some work on the things in that folder. We’ll explain that next.

DropBox keeps your stuff online AND on your computer(s). The beauty of DropBox is that you can access your material from any computer anywhere in the world. Sometimes you will access your online folder using a browser. Other times, when you’re on one of your own computers, you will access your stuff in the folder that is on your hard drive. DropBox automatically syncs that folder every time you go online. If you access your folder in a browser, DropBox syncs any changes that you made with the folder that’s on all or any of your computers the next time you go online. You don’t have to worry about any of this, it’s all done automatically.

All you have to do is make sure that your encrypted containers/volumes/folders are in the DropBox folder on your computer. As soon as you put the encrypted volumes there, DropBox syncs everything automatically, any time there are changes. It really is that simple.

Knowing all of this, you’ll probably agree that this is the best way to hide your personal information online and on your own computer(s). If your house is broken into or if you lose your laptop, anyone can access that information if it’s not encrypted. Don’t wait for that to happen, do it now! Don’t keep the TrueCrypt password on your computers, that’s kind of obvious but we thought we’d mention it.

Photo of Encryption poster
Not just your email. Encrypt everything!

TIP: Use several small containers instead of one large one. That makes syncing much faster. As mentioned above, encrypt a few 10 MB containers and label them accordingly. If you do need a larger container for a video, for example, you probably won’t change it too much so syncing time won’t be an issue.

That’s it for now. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, please let us know.

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Dropbox, Free Software

Setting Up a New Computer – Part Four

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One of the final steps in setting up your new computer should be to install and use Dropbox. We’ve written about Dropbox before, here are some links:

Dropbox 1 – Six reasons to use it. 

Dropbox 2 – How Dropbox can save your bacon

Photo of Dropbox logo
This free site/software is compulsory for your new computer.

Even if you only use one computer, Dropbox (or something similar) should be part of your daily routine. Here’s an explanation of the concept, just in case you don’t know about this handy piece of free software.

Imagine for a moment that you lost your purse or your wallet. Big stress moment, right? What if you had an exact duplicate of that purse or wallet in another room? What if you had an exact duplicate in another pocket or drawer? We think the stress would be substantially lowered. When we say ‘exact duplicate’, we mean just that. A perfect copy of your lost item, down to the old pennies at the bottom and the fluff in the corners.

Dropbox keeps duplicate copies of one folder, the Dropbox folder, on your computer and on the Dropbox website. If you have another computer at work or at the cottage,  your Dropbox folder is synchronized as soon as you fire up that computer. No matter what kind of computer, even a tablet, Dropbox keeps track of everything that’s in the folder and syncs them all almost instantly, you only need an Internet connection.

What if your wallet had ten dollars in it before you lost it? Let’s say you find your wallet and the ten dollars is missing. No worries. The duplicate copies still have the ten dollars in them, wherever they may be. Dropbox keeps records of your current files as well as previous copies of those files in an archive folder online. If you accidentally delete an important file from one of your Dropbox folders, that file will still be available in the Dropbox archive folder. You’ll need to access your online folder to get it but that’s easy to do. Read the link above, the one about ‘saving bacon’, to get an idea of how important this is.

Dropbox gives you 2 gigs of free storage, more if you refer a friend to the site. 2 gigs is more than enough to store your documents, important photo files and family videos. Once you archive those files to a DVD, you can delete them from Dropbox. Any current documents should be saved to Dropbox in order to access them from any computer anywhere in the world that you have an Internet connection.

You can also share files with other people. There is a public folder that you can share as easily as sending an email. Dropbox has a complete set of easy-to-follow instructions which explain all of its features. Trust us, don’t use a computer without it. Dropbox is worth its weight in gold…but it’s free, of course!

Thanks for reading!

 

Dropbox, Encrypt Dropbox Folder

Encrypt your Dropbox folder with TrueCrypt

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In our last post, we encrypted a text document. Here’s that article in case you missed it: Using Notepad ++ to Encrypt a Text File  This post is a continuation of that theme, keeping your cloud files safe from prying eyes. Whose prying eyes? The employees and management of the various cloud companies, that’s who. Now that Microsoft has banned photos containing nudity in their SkyDrive folders, you can be certain that employees/managers/bots scan your files for offending data. Hell, your government is probably scanning those folders as well.

TrueCrypt is free. You can get it here: TrueCrypt  . Once you download TrueCrypt, install it. While it is a very powerful program, Truecrypt is mostly based on passwords. If you lose your various TrueCrypt passwords, you’re totally out of luck so anything you do with this program must be done using a password that you won’t ever forget. You’ve been warned.

The concept of this whole thing is to make an encrypted folder on your computer which will become your Dropbox folder. Since that folder is synced with your online Dropbox folder, it is automatically encrypted.  TIME OUT! In the middle of writing this post we discovered that the guide we were using simply doesn’t work. We managed to encrypt the Dropbox folder on one of our computers but not the online Dropbox folder. We’re back to square one here but we’ll update this post a.s.a.p. Yes, this is a short post but it’s been three days since our last one and we didn’t want anyone to think we’re sleeping on the job. We’re not. Things get in the way every now and then!

We’re back! 

OK, we figured it out. Although the system we started to describe is in different places all over the Internet, it does not work. What follows is the only way to secure your Dropbox contents from prying eyes. You can use the same technique on other cloud services, SkyDrive for instance, and rest assured that no one but you can access your material there…provided you remember the password.

Before we get into the how-to section of this post, we want to explain some principles about what we’re going to do here. You have to know how Dropbox works before you can understand this whole thing.

The Basics

1. There are as many Dropbox folders as there are computers that access the same account…plus one. There is one folder on the Dropbox site itself plus the same folder, more or less, on every computer that you use for the same Dropbox account.

2. If you put a file, let’s say a photo or a video, into your Dropbox folder on one computer, that computer uploads the file to your online Dropbox folder.

3. When you turn on another computer that has access to the same Dropbox account, the file that was just uploaded to the online Dropbox folder is downloaded to the current computer’s Dropbox folder. If you change a fileThis is what syncing is all about, right?

The Problem: 

1. When you change a file, Windows notes the change by telling us that the file was modified at such and such a time/date. If you modify a file, Dropbox notices this and updates that file all by itself. The next time you start your other computer(s), Dropbox sees that the version of a file isn’t the same as the one that it has in its online folder. As soon as it sees the discrepancy, Dropbox downloads the newer version of the file to whatever computer you are currently using.

2. When you are using Truecrypt, any folder you open is hidden, more or less, from Windows. In effect, that file is open only in Truecrypt, as if it was another operating system. You open Truecrypt then open the encrypted folder, add or subtract data from it and then close it before you close Truecrypt. When Truecrypt closes the folder (called dismounting), it does not update Windows on what changes have been made. As far as Windows knows, nothing has changed.

3. Do you see the problem? If Windows doesn’t tell Dropbox that the folder has changed, Dropbox doesn’t know to sync that file with either its own online version of that folder or the other versions of the same folder on any other computer that you use. Ah, there’s the rub.

The Solution: 

1. There’s only one step to this solution. Instead of letting Dropbox sync your encrypted folder by itself, you have to send the folder to Dropbox each time you add or subtract anything from it. Basically, you copy and paste the changed folder into your current computer’s Dropbox folder. Only then will Dropbox feed the newly changed folder up to your online folder. In theory, this is how it should work. While you’re mulling all of this over, we’re trying to check that this is exactly what happens. Next post, we’ll let you know if our theory worked. Wish us luck!

Thanks for reading!

Dropbox

How Dropbox Can Save Your Bacon

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Yesterday, we locked ourselves out of one of our WordPress websites. Even though we write about tech things, we sometimes screw up. Luckily we were able to get back into the site using a password file that we had backed up on Dropbox. Here’s how it went down:

1. We keep a list of passwords in a simple text file on the main office computer and a duplicate file in our Dropbox folder online.

2. Somehow, probably when someone started to type something but didn’t know they were in the password file, one of the passwords got erased.

3. We had the admin password but we’d changed the admin user account’s settings so even though we were able to log-in as admin, we couldn’t do anything. If you have a WordPress site, this is one of the first things you should do. Hackers know that most WordPress users leave the log-in name as ‘admin’ which means that they are already half-way there when it comes to breaking into your site.

4. Since Dropbox syncs your computer’s Dropbox folder with its own online version, both text files were corrupt.

5. We logged on at Dropbox.com, found the file, then looked for the previous versions of that same file, an older version that hadn’t been corrupted. Dropbox stores older versions of files for these kinds of accidents.

6. After we found the file, simply right clicking it brought up this menu:

Photo of Dropbox menu
Right click and choose ‘Previous Version”

7. The previous version of the file had the correct password in it. After we logged into the site, we copied and pasted the missing password back into the original file on our computer. Dropbox, of course, immediately synced the two folders, its own and the one on our computer. We left the previous version as it was, just in case we need it again.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “Why didn’t they just use the ‘forgot password’ option on WordPress?” That makes perfect sense if we used the same email address for all of our sites but we don’t. Checking each of a dozen websites for the WordPress link would have taken much longer. The Dropbox option was faster. We have, however, made a list of what email address is used for each site. That file is on Dropbox and the main computer, of course. Yes, we should have thought of that before but we’re not real geniuses here, we’re just reasonably smart.

Dropbox can really help in this kind of situation. We hope you take our advice and use it. Check out the site, the installation process here:   Dropbox

Thanks for reading!