Dropbox is expanding its line of cloud services with a new password manager. The company has (via AndroidPolice) quietly listed a new app titled Dropbox Passwords on the Android Play Store that lets you host your private credentials and sign into websites.
Based on the limited details available on the app’s Play Store page, Dropbox Passwords seems to come equipped with all the usual trappings of a password manager. You can store your accounts, sign in to other apps and websites with a click of a button, and more. Dropbox adds that the app offers “automatic syncing to all your devices” which likely suggests the company is also working on desktop and iOS clients.
Dropbox is trialing the new service in private beta and as per the listing, it’s “only available to some Dropbox customers.” While anyone can go ahead and download the app, you won’t be able to get past the registration screen which says, “During beta, Dropbox Passwords is only available for a small number of Dropbox customers. We’ll let you know when that changes.”
In addition, Dropbox Passwords users have the option to generate unique, secure passwords when they sign up for new accounts instead of simply punching in the one they’ve used before.
Dropbox Passwords is secured through a method called zero-knowledge encryption. This essentially means only you have access to your vault and even Dropbox doesn’t have the ability to read the passwords you’ve uploaded.
So far, the Google Play Store listing says Dropbox Passwords has been downloaded by more than 10 people. It’s unclear when Dropbox Passwords will be available publicly and whether it will be restricted to the company’s enterprise customers. Given the minimal set of features, the app doesn’t offer customers any compelling reasons to switch from their existing password managers except for the trust they may have in Dropbox but that could change at launch.
We’ve reached out to Dropbox for a comment and we’ll update the story when we hear back.
Dropbox reported its first quarterly profit earlier this year in May as people increasingly adopt cloud services to work remotely. It now has 14.6 million paying users, up from 13.2 million in the same period last year.
