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Is there a way to create a private folder on my Dropbox account, that's invisible to others?

Russell R.2

It would be great if their was a way to create a private section in your dropbox, a folder or directory that we can set to invisible and if someone visits your dropbox they can not see your private folder, only you can see it when you open your dropbox.

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Alexis G.1

If the account is shared between several users, they they all will have access to everything. I fear the only way you can keep a folder secure and away from other users eyes is by encrypting it. Boxcryptor do this work and is free up to some size (If I remember well, up to 2GB is free). It's very easy to use:

- create an account in Boxcryptor website and download the software in your pc

- Boxcryptor will create a folder inside dropbox and request a password

- move the files you want to keep confidential into this folder

- content of this folder will be encrypted

- all users with the login information can see the documents but when they opened, the content is encrypted. there you can only have unusable data.

- only the computer with boxcryptor software and key can decrypt the documents (it's transparent to you).

Note: Boxcryptor can be loaded in your smartphone as well

Note2: You need to backup the Boxcryptor key!!! if you lost the key, your data in the encrypted folder is lost forever!

Note3: backup all your data on regular basis into HDD or DVD, etc.

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Swackhamer Meeh

I second that. I work for two different corporate entities owned by the same family trusts, and we have Dropbox Pro set up for each in order to keep the accounts/information completely separate. Each account is accessed (via shared folders and direct website access) by the same 4-6 people, although I do the actual document adding. We now need to set up a private section to which only I would have access, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. What I need to add/keep is not really large enough for a separate Dropbox account, so I'd like to be able to do so within one of the existing accounts.

Any possibility of such a thing?

Mark

No as thats simply not how Dropbox is designed to work I'm afraid. Dropbox is not designed, or intended, to work with multiple people using 1 account (security reasons more than anything). Each person should have their own folder and then share the data between accounts.

Swackhamer Meeh

Pity. We set it up because our multiple users are scattered across the country (and one international), so Dropbox is the most efficient way to give everyone access to the corporate files. Now I need to stash something because I'm losing data (files are becoming corrupted) on the flash drive I've been using for storage, but the amount of stuff is so small that it hardly seems worth setting up even a free Dropbox account.

Oh, well--it was an idea.

Thanks.

Alexis G.1

why you just don't create a shared folder and shared with another dropbox user. put in the shared folder everything you want to share.

Alexis G.1

Another option I want to share with you. You can install BoxCryptor (free up to 2GB) for your dropbox. Boxcryptor create an encrypted folder. You can access the specified folder only if you have the password. https://www.boxcryptor.com/en

Swackhamer Meeh

All the folders are currently shared; I'm trying to figure out a way to create a folder that can't be accessed by the other users. Since they all have the login information, they can--at least in theory--access all the folders on the website, but I need one that contains files they shouldn't see. Thanks to your suggestion about Boxcryptor, there might be a way to do that, and I appreciate that. Thanks!

Alexis G.1

- create an account in Boxcryptor website and download the software in your pc

- Boxcryptor will create a folder inside dropbox and request a password

- move the files you want to keep confidential into this folder

- content of this folder will be encrypted

- all users with the login information can see the documents but when they opened, the content is encrypted. there you can only have unusable data.

- only the computer with boxcryptor software and key can decrypt the documents (it's transparent to you).

Note: Boxcryptor can be loaded in your smartphone as well

Note2: You need to backup the Boxcryptor key!!! if you lost the key, your data in the encrypted folder is lost forever!

Note3: backup all your data on regular basis into HDD or DVD, etc.

Swackhamer Meeh

This is massively helpful--thank you!

[This thread is now closed by moderators due to inactivity. If you're experiencing a similar behavior, feel free to start a new discussion in the Dropbox Community here.]