Before we all jump up and start screaming for blood, I checked dropbox and its functioning without any MAJOR problems. There was a thread created here by a user Karen B..
“Hi,
I’ve tried to open dropbox today to find a huge red note on screen saying this is an unsafe website. I’ve sent a link back to microsoft to say that I think it is safe but everytime i now try to open dropbox i have to click through the security.
Can you help?”
Now obviously users who saw this error got mad and raged like monkey’s on periods (not really, would be fun if they did) but it got me thinking, what if Microsoft decides to Kline some website in this fashion, let’s say Totseans.com, will anyone stop them from doing it, sure big companies like Dropbox might have a chance but what about forums like us. What if MS hates us and will find any excuse to block us. But again, I am being unrealistic here, why would MS block some website in this fashion, but what if a group of users tried doing this?
That got me thinking again, so I tried to submit a website using IE9. You can find a submission page here: https://feedback.smartscreen.microsoft.com/feedback.aspx
It’s actually quite easy and with the help of Anonymous you might actually pull it off. Consider this scenario, a group of users decide they want to target XYZ website which has a large corporate user base which accesses the website daily using their trusted Windows Internet Explorer, they’re forced to use it because the company backend software requires it, 1000 of users start sending false reports using different computers and soon the website/domain gets black listed and everyone on the user end gets pissed at the company and then starts calling the support staff which in turn get pissed off because they can’t find anything wrong with the website and then the chain continues.
In the end, countless hours are lost and Microsoft is contacted to fix the issue. I am sure something like this could happen to ANY website and it’s something to think about. Having MS Tech Support on speed dial would be a good thing but all is not lost, if that happens a simple switch to Firefox or Opera will fix the issue.
Moving on to the topic at hand, did Dropbox website got flagged, we don’t know according to the users it did but I didn’t see any proof of it. Should you be worried about it? Yes, considering the recent changes in the web sphere, it’s best that we all remain ON OUR very best behavior.
Before anyone points out the flaw in my plan, I didn’t research most of it, I presumed it will work in that fashion, so please don’t complain about it. It’s just a thought. If you haven’t already, you should consider joining our newsletter for more updates and bunch of stuff that I am sure you will enjoy.
Comments/Suggestions are welcome.
Update:
There is an issue with Microsoft blocking the amazonaws.com domain. Dropbox uses that for file access. This is impacting anyone using the Amazon CDN in this way. by Mike D.
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