Hmmm… Thought-provoking post by Susan Orlean. As Dropbox becomes more ubiquitous this will become more of an issue for everyone.

Privacy became an issue the other day in the case of Dropbox, the popular online backup service. Apparently, in its original wording, Dropbox’s terms of service made it sound as if files stored there were encrypted, so employees couldn’t read them, even if they wanted to. But recently the wording was changed to something a little squishier: it now seems that employees are merely “prohibited” from reading files, rather than unable. I was dismayed when I heard this, because I use Dropbox constantly, but my dismay had more to do with seeing a good company handle an issue so clumsily than thinking my privacy was suddenly compromised. Millions of files are uploaded to Dropbox every day. Even the biggest nosey body in the world couldn’t go through that much stuff.