Dropbox removed ability to opt your files out of AI training::undefined
Why does dropbox have the ability to see your files at all? That seems like a pretty bad security flaw in the first place.
Because you gave them the files?
If you don’t want dropbox to see them, encrypt them.
Apple makes a shitload of money from the devices and ecosystem that have access to their cloud storage, they don’t have the same incentive to use the data itself for profit. In fact, keeping the data as private as they can is a selling point for the devices and ecosystem they make bank from. Dropbox doesn’t have that.
The downside is I used to use Dropbox a lot for collabs with others. We’re now using something else (Google Drive 🤮) but for a while, Dropbox was king.
Email is like the one critical part a lot of people miss when talking about taking control of your data. Imagine how much could be gleaned out of email history? Where you go, what you do, who you talk with, what you buy, what you rent, what media you consume, everything. If you dont have a lot of friends someone with your email account could pretty much just doppelganger you and go on as if nothings happened.
There are drawbacks to end-to-end encryption (E2EE). I’m not aware of any E2EE cloud storage systems that have the features Dropbox provides. I would LOVE to know of any that…
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Support at least the big 5 platforms (Android/iOS/Mac/Windows/Linux).
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Have a functional web interface.
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Support sharing and collaboration.
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Have a search feature
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Sync to the local filesystem on a folder-by-folder or even file-by-file basis
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Integrate with other tools (e.g. android file picker)
It’s not easy to do all that with E2EE, like a functional web interface, search, and integration.
ProtonMail’s search, for example, is limited to subject and metadata, and that’s specifically because they DON’T use E2EE for that.
I’m willing to compromise some of this for the sake of E2EE, but I’m not at all surprised that feature-first services are more popular than privacy-first services.
I just checked to see if I missed a big update.
There’s still no Linux client, and it cannot sync files on Android (it only supports photo backups).
I can’t work around that limitation on Android with FolderSync, either, the way I can with Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or any WebDAV- or S3-compatible server. Since it uses E2EE, any uploads need to go directly through the app, so integrations are difficult.
It doesn’t seem to have a search feature, either, at least not on Android. I can’t imagine there’s any content-aware search on the web UI, since that can’t be done server-side.
There’s been some interesting research in homomorphic encryption over the past couple years, which might someday lead to encrypted server-side search. But I think there are still major hurdles to actually implementing it securely and efficiently.
1: easy to port E2EE, it’s just math
2: browsers and E2EE is hard, you need an extension to implement it securely so the password can’t be made accessible directly to the server (you need it to remain secret even from the hosting company) or else you’re dealing with MITM risk
3: easy by sharing encryption keys using E2EE messaging protocols on top
4: encrypted search is a thing, but such indexes does tend to have some limitations
5: still easy
6: still easy, Android specifically have APIs to let apps register themselves to the file picker so they can transparently encrypt and decrypt files. But yes on other systems where 3rd party apps can’t offer such integration then it’s hard
I’ve seen one called Skiff that’s trying to do most of these things
Mega uses e2ee and is available in all platforms I use. I don’t use apple. Web interface is very functional. I think it does support sharing files via link. Should have a search feature also, never used (because I know exactly where I keep my files). It does sync with locals. I don’t know about android file picker.
Mega is not a good choice for Lemmy users or Foss activists, probably because of its history - which is not as clean as say next cloud, but is not like google either. As long as it works :/
Response from dropbox in that post: “Jumping in to clarify some confusion. The AI third-party toggle is only visible to users who have access to our AI features. If you don’t see the AI third-party toggle, then you can’t view or use Dropbox AI features. To reiterate, neither this nor any other setting automatically or passively sends any Dropbox customer data to a third-party AI service. Please see our Help Center article for a list of those with access to Dropbox AI features.”
I don’t know why I find it so surprising that Dropbox apparently has a Hacker News account, but I am mindblown that’s a thing.
I thought HN would be way too niche for that to be a thing.
Seeing dropbox is actually a ycombinator alumni it’s not that surprising 😄
If you want a laugh, go back to their initial “Show HN” post. It made one person with the top comment rather infamous for being out of touch with his comment on “I could just rsync, why would I use this?”
Dropbox is pretty cool. (Don’t mistake this as some weird astroturfing.) I remember hearing about their custom hardware on an episode of se-radio. Very fascinating stuff.
You can still opt out by opting not to use Dropbox.
Guess I need to find and close that account now
I did this. Enjoy unsharing literally every shared file and folder and removing access etc. I thought I deleted all my files. Nope. Checked the shared area. You’ll need to undo all of that manually. Only then was I finally able to rid myself of this enshittified disaster. Goodbye forever Dropbox. The only good you ever did was scannable.
I HATE Dropbox.
I tried to use them recently and their service had some problems.
They have an option to “stream” files when you need them. The only problem is you need an internet connection to access them. I did not trust this kind of system and I actually need to access my files even without internet.
So there is a way to make the files available offline. Great! Problem solves. NOPE! They offer an option to have your files available offline, but they might remove the files and make them only available in the cloud if you local storage gets low.
That is really all they say about it and there is no option to turn this off. I was uncomfortable about their vagueness and my inability to disable this.
Within 24 hours of paying for their service I learned of this and they refused to refund my purchase.
PLEASE NEVER WORK WITH DROPBOX
it was painful to migrate from dropbox. their api is shit and does nothing to guarantee delivery. i had to split folders into 5gb chunks and download everything in zip files through the browser. it took a year. what an awful company.
I’ve used Dropbox since literally their first year of creation and I’ve never experienced a single one of these issues. I use it mostly as a portable library and all I need is 2 mins of any internet connection to download any book(s) I want to read to a local device. Mind you this is on their free plan, so I’ve never paid a cent to them either. Requires me to periodically transfer older books to another long term solution, but that is just a few mouse clicks. I’ve read hundreds if not more ebooks this way. Since I prefer .mobi (which I can even read IN dropbox if I want) I can upload straight to dropbox after converting from .epub.
I mean, it sounds frustrating, but your experience with them sounds extremely weird to me.
At least to me they’ve been the best cloud provider by far, for what it’s worth.
With that said, I don’t especially like that they’re doing this even though my specific content is mostly available in any number of places anyway, given that it’s literature.
