I love dropbox. It has really helped me synchronize important files between computers, while making an online backup of everything. But because the 2 gb free space that you get on a basic account isn't enough for me, I've been looking for ways to increase it. Of course there are the normal ways to increase your dropbox space, described here. You can get 16 gb extra space by referring 32 people, but this is hard to do if you're friendless like me. I found a way to cheat the referral system here and here. The steps on these pages seem a bit outdated though, so I decided to rewrite it a bit according to my own experiences. Who knows, maybe it can help someone.
Let me start by saying that if you have friends that could use dropbox, you should really just get them to try it out. If you have the money (and aren't a cheapskate like me), just pay for a pro account. If you're afraid of getting your account banned, don't do this either.
1. Sign in with your account on dropbox.com. Save your referral link.
2. Download virtualbox and install it.
3. Download an Ubuntu iso (you can also use any windows or linux iso/cd if you want)
4. In virtual box manager, create a virtual machine for your ubuntu iso by pressing "New" and following the steps
5. Start the virtual machine. In the first run wizard, select the ubuntu iso as your installation media. The virtual machine will now load using the ubuntu iso.
6. On the ubuntu welcome screen, choose "try ubuntu". Ubuntu will now start up.
7. In ubuntu, open firefox and go to dropbox.com. Download dropbox for ubuntu. (Download -> ubuntu 32 or 64 bit -> open .deb file in ubuntu software center -> in software center, click install)
8. Run dropbox. On the startup screen, choose "I already have a dropbox account".
9. Make a snapshot of the current state. (In the virtualbox menu: Machine -> Take Snapshot)
10. Use your referral link to sign up for a dropbox account. You don't have to use an existing email address to sign up, it will just accept anything that looks like one. You can either do this step in your normal OS or in virtualbox itself.
11. Enter the email address and password of the account that you just created. Click forward. Now you should've gained 500 mb extra space on your original dropbox account.
12. Close the virtual box and return it to the snapshot (Machine -> Close -> Power off Machine & select Restore current snapshot)
13. In the virtualbox manager, start the virtual machine again by pressing start.
Repeat steps 10-13. It should only take a few minutes per referral, so it's fast enough to do once you've set it up.
EDIT: As suggested in the comments, you can try a combination of these solutions between every try if it doesn't work for you:
-change the mac address of the virtual machine
-change your IP address
-boot back to the live cd and continue from step 5
Please stop spamming this post with referral links.
EDIT2: Maybe you should consider using Copy instead of Dropbox. Copy offers 15 GB of free space and 5 GB per referral. If you sign up using a referral link, you also get 5 GB extra space to start with. Here is my referral link if you're interested.
