[andrewfong]

You're not the only one who thinks that way, but I actually have a hard time justifying that level of concern to myself. I mean, how much added risk is there for the average user in storing her financial records and health information on Dropbox vs. anything else she might store in the cloud?

As far as worst case scenarios go, the financial system does a decent job of making you whole in the event of fraud, and doctors don't rely (solely) upon the stuff in your Dropbox account to make important medical decisions.

That's not to say there's no danger. There's obviously no shortage of Bad Things that could be done with your financial and medical information, but for most people, it's not much worse than the Bad Things that could be done with the photos they share on Facebook, the e-mails they archive in Gmail, or the phone numbers and addresses scattered across countless unsecured databases around the web. In fact, I'd argue that most Dropbox users would be more concerned about Dropbox leaking their private photos and letters than credit card statements and medical bills.