Dropbox Fulfills Promise to Tighten Security with Two-Step Verification

Earlier this month, popular cloud storage service Dropbox was hacked. According to the company, user login credentials were swiped from another site, and those credentials were used to access Dropbox user accounts. At least one of those accounts actually belonged to a Dropbox employee, who had more user email addresses and passwords stored in his or her Dropbox folders.

Dropbox contacted affected users directly and presumably gained complete control over the breach, but it pledged to take steps to beef up its security so that such a thing would be less likely to happen again.

That promise is now officially fulfilled, as Dropbox announced its new two-step verification process.


Now, in order for anyone (yourself included) to access your Dropbox account, the service requires a password as well as a security code. The latter will be sent to your phone or automatically generated with a mobile authenticator app, which is available on your mobile platform of choice. You can also take a peek at all active logins on your Dropbox Security tab to make sure no one besides you is accessing your account.

Note that you’ll only have to take this extra step once when using Dropbox on your computer or mobile device, and even if you’re using the service via a Web browser, you can indicate that the machine you’re using is a trusted computer so you won’t have to use the code again.

If you’re looking for detailed setup instructions, you can find them here.