Issue with DropBox

I normally use mediafire to share my files but sometimes mediafire is not working at SLIIT due to the proxy server. Therefore I wanted to find a better way to share files. Emailing is not possible because most of the time my files contain exe files and gmail is not allowing exe file attachments.

Then I moved into dropbox. It is a very good solution since it synchronizes the files in my PC so that I can access them from anywhere. Sharing is also easy because we can get a public link and share the link so that the particular file can be downloaded using the link.

This is the place where the problem encountered. When I drag a file into the public folder of dropbox in my PC, the file is uploaded to the server. I can right click on that file and get the link for public sharing.

 Suppose I have two files in my drop box called 'Simulator.zip' and 'MATCH.exe'. Now I'll get the public sharing links for those two files.

For security reasons I've indicated some part of the link as 'XXXXXXX' but in both links those are same. Now suppose I have another file called 'Hello.txt' in my public folder. Now somebody who has a public link of my drop box can download it without knowing the URL for that file. 

It can be derived as 'http://dl.dropbox.com/u/XXXXXXXX/Hello.txt'. So if somebody has a link of a file in my dropbox and also if he knows the file name then he can download that file like this. Or even by guessing the name of the file it might work. So when you are putting your personal files to your dropbox, be careful.

-Tharindu Edirisinghe-
-SLIIT 10'