Most email services have a maximum message size you can send and sometimes limits on attached file sizes. This is generally only a problem if you’re trying to send video clips but can occur if you want to send a group of high resolution pictures for example or a series of large documents.
Yahoo and Gmail limit is 25MB per message
Outlook limit is 20 MB but Office 365 expands considerably on this.
Paid for email services and business email systems may have much higher maximum message sizes or even no limit in some cases.
- What to do when you want to email a very large file
Services like Dropbox have been created to solve this problem.
It is very efficient – you simply upload a file to Dropbox (or a similar service) using your free or paid for account and effectively send a link to the recipient and they can then download the file without filling up your or their email folders.
The Dropbox fake message scam depends on people being used to receiving these Dropbox messages and clicking to download the file.
Scammers upload a piece of malware disguised as an invoice or holiday template or some other document then send out Dropbox links to that document to a spam email list in hope at least some of the recipients will download and open the malware file.
If you receive a Dropbox file from someone you know and you expected the file, then fine.
If it’s from a person you know but didn’t expect a file, then contact them to see if the file is genuine.
But if it’s from someone you don’t know – then do not download whatever it is.
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