Can a local PC administrator get access to my dropbox local folder and online account?

[Xiaolin W.]

Hi,

I am working on a company's PC with a standard user account, and Dropbox folder is located under the user folder CUsers\ .

The first question is that I'd like to know that if the administrator can get access to my Dropbox files locally.

And second, because my Dropbox account is used for both work and personal info storage, I selectively synced files to local PC, but can a administrator get access to my online files?

Thanks for your time answering these questions.

[Richard P.]

Yes, a local administrator can get access to both your local files and your online files - however, there is a caveat.

The caveat is that gaining access to your local files is trivial - they are there on your local disk, and the local administrator has full permissions to access them.  You can't stop this.

However, for a local administrator to access your online files, they would have to go out of their way to achieve this - they either need to log in to the computer as you (which they can only do by changing the password, so you will know they have done this), install something on the computer which gives them access to your session (basically the same thing as malware does to phish for your details), or they need to take your authenticated Dropbox session and construct a usable environment elsewhere.

So, in summary, accessing your local files is trivial, but accessing your online files means they would have to do a lot of work to achieve it, but they can do it.

In short, if someone else owns and controls your computer, then they literally own and control everything you do or access on that computer.  Never forget that.

[Xiaolin W.]

Thanks Richard for this prompt and informative answer!

You're quite right, there is no such a thing of being 100% 'safe', I will just be more cautious though! 

Again, thanks very much!