Security breach at DivShare

Posted by Caitlin on June 17th, 2008

DivShare, a free, ad-supported online backup and file sharing service, experienced a security breach yesterday. Last night the company announced on its blog that user e-mail addresses and other basic information had been accessed by a “malicious user,” and advised users to change their passwords. Some stored files were unavailable for up to 18 hours as DivShare rolled out new security measures following the breach. While DivShare stated that no financial information had been compromised, this breach demonstrates the importance of security in online backup services. In order to safeguard important files, it is crucial to choose a secure and trustworthy online backup service.

DivShare is not one of the online backup services we have reviewed and recommended. As we posted a couple of weeks ago, Mozy and Carbonite, two of the services that we do recommend, were recently found to be the two most secure online backup services according to Heise, a German computer security publication. Both successfully thwarted attempts by all testers to gain unauthorized data stored on either service. To learn more about Mozy, Carbonite and other online backup services we have reviewed, view our online backup service comparison.