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Dropbox may offer free storage as an incentive for users who complete a security healthcheck on their accounts

by AshwinJuly 2, 2015

Cloud storage service, Dropbox, may offer free storage as an incentive for users who complete a security healthcheck on their accounts.

The news comes from the company’s head of trust and security, Patrick Heim, in an interview with IT Pro.

According to Heim, Dropbox has been the target of many attacks, which happen everyday. The attackers use different methods, including phishing emails being sent to users. These email scam messages actually harvest the data by stealing the users passwords or are linked to malicious downloads, which infects the user’s computers.

Dropbox says it detects malicious attempts to log in and protects user accounts. If any such attempt is found, it blocks the account, and then notifies the user about the same, and forces the user to change the password.

Dropbox is reportedly prepared to face the worst. For instance, even if its servers are hacked and passwords are stolen, it would be of no use to anyone. This is because Dropbox encrypts the passwords, to protect users.

So, Dropbox will tempt users with additional free storage, if they improve their account’s security settings.

This is what Heim said:

“One of the things we’re working on right now is a project we haven’t broadly disclosed yet, but it’s really to incentivise consumers to go through a security healthcheck both in terms of the authentication settings, the sharing settings, etcetera, and when they complete that they may get additional free storage space as an incentive.”

Let me explain how that will work.

The security healthcheck will check the strength of the account’s password, and if it is found to be weak, Dropbox will encourage the users to use a strong password.

Users will also be advised to enable two-factor authentication, i.e., Once enabled, Dropbox will prompt you to authenticate login attempts into the account. Even Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, use such features. The authentication could be done in the form of a code sent through SMS, which the user will have to input in the login screen. Or, they may also use an authenticator app on their smartphone to get the code.

Dropbox could also ask users not to share all their files publicly, and may also revoke sharing settings for older files.

Once a user has completed all of the above mentioned steps, (or more), they may be offered some additional storge space as a reward for protecting their account.

Dropbox has not announced when this promotion would begin. Heim says that the company will not be using an email campaign, for this, as it would be considered “spam”.

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