[HN Gopher] Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled
___________________________________________________________________
Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled
Author : Xeanort
Score : 388 points
Date : 2023-04-27 08:28 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dropboxforum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dropboxforum.com)
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Many times on HN, commenters have mocked those who questioned why
| someone would use Dropbox instead of a method controlled by the
| user. I guess becausse someone made lots of money from it or it
| became popular or something. I always found this perplexing
| because I look at solutions from the perspective of the user,
| namely, me, not from the perspective of a third party "tech"
| startup founder. It's insensitive to the people on HN who want to
| other tried and true solutions. "Other people are using Dropbox,
| so you should too." Who cares. Every user is different. If
| someone wants to use something else besides Dropbox, why harass
| them. I could care less what "99%" of users are doing. I care
| about what I'm doing.
|
| I confess I have never used it. I still rely on USB sticks for a
| variety of tasks, more than simply transferring files. Anyway,
| for me, this telemetry nonsense would be one reason I would avoid
| Dropbox.
|
| Maybe there will someday be telemetry in USB sticks. We'll see.
| Meanwhile...
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I remember when Dropbox was new and it was possibly the only
| solution I could find to seamlessly sync files on multiple
| computers (or at least the only one I knew about).
|
| There was this "Dropbox" folder in your home folder, and
| anything put in there would show up in the home folder on your
| other computer or operating system or eventually even your
| phone. I also knew about Apple File Sharing and it was
| basically that but much more intuitive and worked on separate
| networks and on Windows (maybe Dropbox was inspired by AFS and
| the write-only "Drop Box"). Drop Box just worked, and to less
| tech-savvy younger me that was the only thing that mattered.
|
| Now we have 300+ other programs which can do the same thing,
| and I use Git/Github for syncing and woof/AirDrop for
| individual files, so no Dropbox for me. And probably not for
| most technical users either.
|
| But the average non tech-savvy user still needs a cross-
| platform service which "just works". And I'm sure their are
| alternatives which also "just work", but Dropbox is popular,
| and they don't care about the telemetry.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I use git to sync code.
|
| Do you use it for images, too? Maybe using a large file
| extension. Dropbox syncs around 2TB of random files
| successfully, and it seems like that is not something git it
| very good at (judging by game developers using Perforce or
| others to share files).
|
| I am always open for recommendations to replace Dropbox. Even
| Gdrive (one of the most obvious alternatives) choked on
| performing the initial sync (of 2TB) last time I tried.
| ztnktl wrote:
| If, a big if, you don't need version control, rsync will
| do. It can handle any imaginable amount of data and it can
| work over ssh or for local file syncing. It is much, much
| faster than other solutions too.
|
| It is my main tool to manage things that aren't code, and I
| give myself the ability to go back to older files or
| undelete things in a KISS manner by having multiple rsync
| destinations that are used in rotation.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Git LFS for large files. Or you may need to use a dedicated
| service designed for syncing so much data
|
| I'm surprised dropbox handles those well. Unless things
| changed the free tier still has a <1TB storage limit. But
| it goes to show much it "just works"
| mejutoco wrote:
| Thanks. I am talking about a paid Dropbox and Gdrive
| plans.
| manigandham wrote:
| Dropbox became popular because, from the perspective of 99% of
| users, it provides an incredibly simple and effective UX for
| syncing files across devices and locations. And better UX is
| enough to be a billion-dollar company.
|
| Of course you can use whatever you want.
| abhibeckert wrote:
| > I confess I have never used it. I still rely on USB sticks
|
| Phew boy. You really should try dropbox or a competing
| service.*
|
| Picture this:
|
| 1. Double click a file 2. Type some words 3. Save the file
|
| That's it. There is no step 4. Your file is now synced to all
| your other computers and to any colleagues who also need that
| file.
|
| Seriously you shouldn't be using USB sticks these days. Also -
| I'm guessing you haven't started the transition to USB-C yet?
| USB sticks are going to get really painful when you do.
|
| (* I use a competing service - more than one actually, but I
| have used dropbox in the past and it worked well. I just didn't
| like the direction the company was taking it. This story is yet
| another example of that)
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I'm guessing you haven't started the transition to USB-C
| yet? USB sticks are going to get really painful when you do
|
| Those USB sticks that are A on one end, C on the other are
| excellent. They are also great fidget toys.
|
| https://www.rubbermonkey.co.nz/SanDisk-128GB-Ultra-Dual-
| Driv...
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Also - I'm guessing you haven't started the transition to
| USB-C yet?
|
| Shit, not more painful than _nearly everything else_. You 're
| gonna need a USB-A/C hub anyway, unless you only use very new
| equipment and you've gone out of your way (and, not
| infrequently, spent more money) to make sure you get C
| instead of A versions of everything--lots of A devices still
| being sold.
|
| If not for current-generation console video game controllers,
| I'd still have almost nothing in my house that natively uses
| C, aside from Macbooks and one newish iPad.
|
| (However, I am, like you, a tad scandalized at the notion of
| favoring flash drives over network sync of some sort--I'm a
| luddite in a lot of ways, but god do I not miss losing flash
| drives, having them mysteriously fail in 6-24 months of light
| use [even the good brands! If anything, that part's _worse_
| now than it used to be], the "whoops, forgot to copy the
| file", not being able to have any of the stuff unless you
| _physically have it with you_ , "let me just print this from
| my phone--oh, right, I don't have an adapter to plug a USB
| stick into it", et c. A bunch of extra stress and fiddling,
| to gain... ???)
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Seriously you shouldn't be using USB sticks these days.
|
| Why not? You say that like there's a problem beyond not
| caring if there's a more convenient option.
| okasaki wrote:
| We all know how it works. Some of us don't want the automatic
| syncing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Maybe there will someday be telemetry in USB sticks. We'll
| see. Meanwhile...
|
| I have had experiences where putting in a USB stick
| automatically installs malware on the computer.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| That's only if your computer is configured to automatically
| run whatever autorun.ini specifies, which it really should
| not be.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This was a long time ago, probably windows XP, so don't
| know if that is a fixed problem on newer operating systems.
| I learned to not put USB sticks in back then and eventually
| just never needed to.
| adolph wrote:
| Do you trust that the USB stick is just storage and not
| something additional?
|
| Do you trust that the USB "power port" is just power and
| not a host?
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Regarding rogue client devices: Suppose it's not just
| storage and instead is something additional, like a
| device for which the host will decide (without
| autorun.ini in this case) to install drivers, or interact
| in some other capacity along those lines. Can this
| automatically cause arbitrary code execution? I would not
| consider code supplied through official OS channels ("let
| windows search for a driver online" type of stuff) to be
| arbitrary, because those repositories ought to be trusted
| as not containing malware. Rather, by arbitrary I mean
| the USB device supplies the payload or supplies a URL
| that the OS requests, and then the OS automatically
| executes that. I've never heard of such a thing, but it's
| conceivable... source?
|
| Regarding rogue host devices (not just a power port): I
| agree 100%, these are dangerous. Luckily a typical USB
| port on a Windows computer can only interact with client
| devices, not host devices, as far as I'm aware. The
| inverse of OTG doesn't seem like it would exist.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Can this automatically cause arbitrary code execution?
|
| USB has capability to launch any arbitrary code that the
| user itself could without inputting any secret.
|
| On anything that isn't the best protected Linux GUI
| (better protected than the configurations that everybody
| use), this is enough to install a keylogger on your
| environment and sniff any secret that it's lacking (but
| root/administrator rights are overrated anyway).
|
| There has been some work on restricting USB so that it
| can't initiate anything. But that brings extreme
| usability problems, so it's very rare for people to do it
| in practice.
| rcxdude wrote:
| The most obvious rogue client device exploit is to
| pretend to be a mouse and/or keyboard, which on most
| devices will allow you to execute arbitrary code
| trivially, though not completely stealthily. "USB rubber
| ducky" is one such device available to consumers now. As
| for exploiting drivers: while the software might be
| 'trusted', I highly doubt that it is all actually secure.
| Emulating a USB device with a low-quality driver and then
| exploiting that driver by violating its assumptions about
| the hardware its expected to be talking to is a rich
| field of potential exploits (even on linux, there's vast
| swaths of low-quality driver code which has nowhere near
| the hardening of the network stack).
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Do you trust that the USB stick is just storage and not
| something additional?
|
| Yes, because it's my USB stick.
|
| > Do you trust that the USB "power port" is just power
| and not a host?
|
| Not if it's not my hardware. In that case, I use a data
| blocking dongle. Always practice safe Software EXchange.
| adrr wrote:
| USB sticks fail. Also the default file system is fat32 which
| doesn't support journaling or file versioning.
| wanda wrote:
| Dropbox's specific popularity on HN may partially stem from its
| original backing by YC. It will have enjoyed additional
| exposure here thanks to that, and to be fair to Dropbox, it was
| a good product.
|
| I say *was because I cannot speak for how it is now, I do not
| have any data to judge how it is now.
|
| I stopped using it a long time ago - not because I disliked it,
| I just picked a different solution.
| meling wrote:
| I'm still using it, but to me their service has become worse
| over time as more and more features were tacked on that I
| don't want or need... and they are really not listening to
| their users who want a better experience instead of more
| junk. I'm also in the market for a better alternative, but
| haven't found one so far that is as easy to use as Dropbox.
| I'd prefer to not have to manage my own servers.
| wanda wrote:
| I have heard good things about Syncthing but it depends on
| your use case.
|
| https://syncthing.net/
| latexr wrote:
| > I guess becausse someone made lots of money from it or it
| became popular or something.
|
| No, it's because it was useful _and simple_ in a way that non-
| techies could _and would_ set up and use. That's why Dropbox
| got popular.
| nottorp wrote:
| Even as a techie, why would you put in the work to set up
| your own thing?
|
| Though, I moved away from Dropbox long ago when they
| introduced device limits. One phone, one laptop and one
| triple booting desktop -> over the device limit already.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Even as a techie, why would you put in the work to set up
| your own thing?
|
| As a techie, I do this so that I can maintain control and
| trust, and so that when something goes wrong, I can fix it
| instead of just refreshing the status page of the service
| and hoping.
|
| I in no way think that anyone else _should_ do like me, but
| when people are having trouble with a service, I will
| mention options that involve not needing that service.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| To be fair, nowadays setting up syncthing is trivial for a
| techie and keeping it running isn't harder than keeping
| dropbox running on your computer.
|
| At the time dropbox launched, there wasn't anything this
| convenient.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Putting in the work to setup your own thing is great. You
| learn a lot, if your doing it at an advanced level you
| start to understand some of the designs/tradeoffs that the
| commercial products made.
|
| Keeping that running and reliable and operating it for
| years or decades sounds like an absolute nightmare and I'd
| suggest avoiding that at all costs.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Keeping that running and reliable and operating it for
| years or decades sounds like an absolute nightmare
|
| But it's not. I run many such services for myself, and
| keeping them running and reliable hasn't been a large
| burden.
| ihateyouall123 wrote:
| I run a lot of my own things on my network. It is a
| nightmare, but I still do it. If I had more money, I
| would absolutely outsource this process.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder why our experiences are so
| radically different?
| nottorp wrote:
| Well... if you run owncloud (or any other alternative in
| fashion) you need off site backups and a plan for
| disaster recovery to match what an external service can
| offer. Backup machine or funds to get one at short
| notice.
|
| If you use a 3rd party service they'll handle that too.
|
| It's not the initial setup that's the problem.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > you need off site backups
|
| Yes, but that's not technically difficult or time-
| consuming.
|
| > a plan for disaster recovery to match what an external
| service can offer.
|
| I'm not sure what you really mean by this. Isn't that
| what the backups are for?
| nottorp wrote:
| > > you need off site backups
|
| > Yes, but that's not technically difficult or time-
| consuming.
|
| Yes, you just pay for some server space on a cloud
| service... oh wait...
|
| The point is all this trivial to do stuff just adds up,
| and sometimes it does make sense to use a 3rd party.
|
| Your pain threshold may just be larger than mine.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Yes, you just pay for some server space on a cloud
| service... oh wait...
|
| I consider dumb storage for encrypted data to still be
| sufficiently under my control.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I have a Dropbox account, since eternity, but used it very
| rarely. Until I decided to remove my desktop computer from my
| life, and live with my Office PC and a laptop.
|
| Suddenly I have ripped myself out of a lot of stationary
| storage space, and access to a lot of files in the process.
| Moreover, this change was also compounded by lifestyle changes,
| which reduced my computer time at evenings a lot.
|
| Then, I realized that I used these files a lot, and I needed
| them where I am, regardless of the device I have with me. After
| that, I understood what Dropbox is about. I have all my files,
| everywhere I need, anytime I need.
|
| Moreover, many of the bookstores and merchants deliver things I
| buy _directly into my Dropbox_. That 's great. Even updates to
| these items arrive automatically.
|
| I backup the whole thing weekly via rclone to a disk, and I'm
| happy.
| popey wrote:
| I switched away from Dropbox to Syncthing https://syncthing.net/
| a few years ago. Running it on Windows, Mac and Linux (I don't
| use it on mobile) to keep all manner of files in sync across a
| bunch of machines. While it doesn't have all the shell
| integration and end-user friendliness of Dropbox, it also doesn't
| have the pitfalls like (non-optional) telemetry and constant up-
| sell.
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| The essential feature that Syncthing as a Dropbox replacement
| lacks is public sharing.
|
| Although requested by many users throughout the years, the
| maintainers never considered it seriously.
| p-e-w wrote:
| And I'm glad they didn't. The mere _existence_ of such a
| feature would make me worry about unintentionally enabling it
| and exposing private data as a result.
| layer8 wrote:
| You don't expose data just by enabling the sharing, because
| it's only accessible via a URL containing a hash-like
| identifier that can't be guessed. It's not more realistic
| than someone guessing your Syncthing password.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Unfortunately this is not true. Your browser likes to
| send any URLs it comes across to indexing services. If
| you share the link via Discord or whatever, it'll be
| scrapped.
|
| This is also just very outside Syncthing's functionality.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Unfortunately this is not true. Your browser likes to
| send any URLs it comes across to indexing services. If
| you share the link via Discord or whatever, it'll be
| scrapped.
|
| You still have to manually create the URL first. You
| don't need to worry about accidentally having everything
| exposed because the feature is enabled.
|
| > This is also just very outside Syncthing's
| functionality.
|
| The context was specifically "as a Dropbox replacement".
| cma wrote:
| It is a problem if you use Edge:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35703789
| hitchdev wrote:
| [dead]
| epalm wrote:
| What end-user friendliness is missing from syncthing?
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| I use Syncthing too, but only between my local machines. I
| don't use it for cloud backup because I've never found 2 TB of
| cloud storage as cheap as Dropbox. If anybody knows of such a
| vendor I'd love to hear about it.
|
| Edit: I should further qualify that I'm not interested in
| solutions that would lock me into Apple's walled garden or
| anybody else's.
| netruk44 wrote:
| If you're okay with a VPS, Servarica's 2022 Black Friday
| offerings (which are still available) has a 2 TB HDD VPS for
| $48/year.
| kevinmgranger wrote:
| I haven't heard of them before, but those prices are almost
| _suspiciously_ good. Have you found them to be reliable?
|
| Edit: they're using the older unity logo for their "disk"
| column. That doesn't inspire confidence in their
| legitimacy.
| netruk44 wrote:
| I'm using mine primarily as a redundant backup host. So,
| for that usage, they're perfectly reliable and
| functional.
|
| However, the machine is absolutely slow. It usually takes
| a few seconds before SSH brings me to a shell prompt. Web
| apps I have running on it (basically just Gitea and
| Vikunja at the moment) can take upwards of 10 seconds to
| render pages, and it's just me using it. If you just want
| a storage host, they're fine. Running your website off
| it? I would probably not recommend.
|
| Reliability, I have not had any issues so far, but I'm
| hardly a power user. My own personal anecdote is that my
| backups get validated monthly and, so far, have not had
| any issues.
|
| I would probably agree that these machines alone would
| not suffice to make a good Dropbox alternative if what
| you're storing there isn't backed up elsewhere. I would
| recommend supplementing with off-site backups to B2 at
| the very least.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| This looks ideal. Thanks!
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Update: Servarica won't take my money.
|
| They won't let you sign up from a VPN. That's annoying
| but it doesn't affect me. Maybe they're trying to prevent
| Russian bots from signing up or something. Fine.
|
| But after I gave them a valid credit card and billing
| address, they still won't take my money. Here's their
| support response:
|
| "Your IP address does not match with the location you
| have provided. In order to accept your order your IP
| address must match the actual location from where you are
| placing the order."
|
| Ohh kaay. I'm traveling at the moment in a different US
| state from my billing address. I'm not in Mongolia. And
| even when I'm at my billing address, my main ISP is
| Starlink, whose primary ground stations for me are also
| in a different state than I'm in. So I routinely see
| banner ads on websites for stores that are 500 miles
| away.
|
| It's par for the course for non-technical companies to
| assume that IP geolocation is in any way accurate. But a
| _cloud VPS company_ should know better.
|
| Fail.
| Pawka wrote:
| I did the same. Plus also I'm using on my Android phone.
| Replaces Dropbox completely unless I want to share something
| with other people. But for that case I usually use Sharing
| feature from Synology NAS.
| popey wrote:
| Oh I also have shared folders with other people. We used to
| use it for sharing audio files between podcast presenters,
| which worked well enough. I have half a dozen folders in my
| $HOME, shared with different groups of people.
|
| I also have Syncthing installed on my home server which gets
| backed up. So I have a copy of all my files backed up there,
| in the event a laptop goes missing or dies.
|
| The only use case I haven't yet covered is an off-site backup
| of my Syncthing folder, which would be sensible. I just don't
| know who I can trust with it.
| bayindirh wrote:
| You can install a cron job which compresses, encrypts and
| rsyncs/rclones your home backup weekly to somewhere. Or you
| can use BackInTime which can automatically encrypt and only
| backup changed files, again to a remote location.
| devsda wrote:
| A word of caution for anyone planning to use syncthing for
| backups.
|
| Syncthing is designed as a sync solution but not explicitly
| for backups. You need some extra setup on top of the
| defaults for building a reliable backup solution.
|
| If not setup correctly, any "mistakes" from one of the
| devices will automatically be synced to other devices and
| cannot be retrieved back.
|
| In the case of a lost/stolen device, make sure you remove
| the device as soon as possible. If not a bad actor now
| possessing the device can delete and sync that back to your
| "back-up" devices too.
| eviks wrote:
| Yeah, no, easier to block the telemetry domain than deal
| with such a huge risk of losing everything
| evandrofisico wrote:
| You can try to use the untrusted device functionality, the
| data is encrypted on the sending device. Word of caution,
| it is still beta, an in my experience, it is kinda hit or
| miss, for some folders it worked beautifully, for another,
| it simply did not sync after the initial configuration.
|
| https://docs.syncthing.net/users/untrusted.html
| [deleted]
| geophile wrote:
| I use Dropbox for transfers between Linux and iOS, so syncthing
| doesn't help. Is there something similar that supports iOS?
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| The Tailscale cli has a file transfer function that works
| well between linux and iOS.
| eloisius wrote:
| Syncthing saved my ass last month. My Framework laptop got
| stolen while I was traveling. I was able to pick up a second-
| hand MacBook Air, connect it to my introducer, and within a few
| hours I had all my files back.
|
| I have a Pi with software RAID and two HDDs running Syncthing
| in my apartment. I rent a cheap Storage VPS from time4vps.com
| which is untrusted and set as an introducer--meaning, the data
| is encrypted before it reaches the VPS, and as an introducer it
| will announce devices to one another. My (former) laptop and an
| iMac where I do all my work are always in sync. If I need to
| add a new device, I only have to connect it to the VPS and
| suddenly all the other devices know of it.
| simultsop wrote:
| nice setup, do you maintain the project too often? Does it go
| obsolete due to any update? Or is that just ssh and scp?
| eloisius wrote:
| It's surprisingly easy to maintain. I'm not someone that
| enjoys tinkering with shit like this to be honest, but I
| didn't want to put my entire photo collection and what-
| have-you on Dropbox. Setting up the software raid was
| difficult. I ran into a tar pit with that, but it turned
| out the Pi can't power two drives at once, and a powered
| USB hub was all I needed. Otherwise, I've only sshed into
| the VPS a handful of times in the year that it's been
| running. I haven't had to to touch Syncthing on the Pi. I
| probably need to run apt upgrade somewhere, but it's all
| working fine.
| bomewish wrote:
| why not use the syncthing introducer thingy? You concerned
| they gonna spy on the packets or what?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That's not what an introducer is. It's an easier way of
| configuring which computers can synchronize with each
| other, not to be mistaken for a relay.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Syncthing is so much better than Dropbox. There are no
| accounts, so it's much easier to set up syncing between
| multiple machines that may not belong to the same user, or to
| shared devices. I use it to sync family documents, work
| documents, for syncing Factorio save games, ...
|
| I've also never had problems with CPU usage (Dropbox often
| caused high CPU usage in some cases)
|
| The only downside is that background sync on iOS with Mobius
| Sync doesn't work reliably, but I think that is mainly because
| of how Apple cripples background processing. It does sync
| quickly if you manually start the app.
|
| It's a bit challenging for new users (you need to understand
| machine keys, folder identifiers, ignore lists), but once it's
| set up it just works.
| sneak wrote:
| Mobius Sync is more IAP cancer, unfortunately.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| They had to do a lot of extra work to make things work on
| iOS and it does work. I think it was $6 for a full license?
|
| I happily paid for it and use it to this day.
| w0m wrote:
| > much easier to set up syncing between multiple machines
| that may not belong to the same user
|
| I always thought this as one of the bigger value-adds of
| Dropbox; easy cross user management and sharing.
| LatticeAnimal wrote:
| I have used Dropbox and have setup Syncthing for myself and
| my opinion is that:
|
| Sync thing is relatively easy for the average HN user.
|
| Dropbox is relatively easy for the average non-HN user.
|
| Neither are hard, but Syncthing requires some background
| understanding of computers
| jiri wrote:
| One can install and use nextcloud. You get similar client and
| similar experience. You need to care about your data and server
| though.
| brettermeier wrote:
| Taking care of data and servers is the big problem, even for
| people who are more into computers. There are many holes to
| fall into.
| jraph wrote:
| There are Nextcloud providers :-)
|
| Here's a list in French:
| https://wiki.chatons.org/doku.php/services/nextcloud
|
| BTW I'm learning from it that /e/ [1] partners with Murena
| [2] which offers accounts with 1 GB of free storage.
| Apparently, Murena is French.
|
| [1] https://murena.io/
|
| [2] https://e.foundation/
| adrr wrote:
| Also some of us here work at public companies and these
| systems are under scope since finance needs away to
| share/edit financial documents with each other. These big
| firms have soc1s. Running our own infra would put that infra
| under scope which is a huge burden.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Fuck all telemetry (sharing any information which is not just
| "you have no control over" but anything which is not logically
| necessary for the app to do its primary job). Just don't use any
| apps you can block from doing this. IMHO this (sending redundant
| and untransparent information from a user's machine) should be
| outlawed.
| Xeamek wrote:
| Error reporting is far from being redundant though, it's
| literally 1 step away from being 'logically necessary'
| Valodim wrote:
| This. It's hard to take app development that doesn't use any
| kind of crash reporting seriously, tbqh.
|
| Like, there's a crash reported by a user. That's already rare
| in itself, and average report quality from non technical
| users varies from nearly useless to misleading. What are you
| gonna do, ask them where it happened and what they were
| doing, to guess where in your related code something went
| wrong?
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I would gladly report all the bugs myself manually, with all
| the details, specifics and reproduction steps. The only
| problem is 85% of bugs I ever reported either got "won't fix"
| status (mostly in free software) or just been silently
| forgotten (mostly at work) or got a "pay first, then ask for
| fixes" response (when it was about shareware). So I lost
| enthusiasm. Free software bug reporting also often has a
| problem of requiring registration in a separate BugZilla for
| every project but this problem has mostly been resolved by
| the majority moving to GitHub.
|
| By the way, although I don't want to participate in
| involuntary and non-transparent automatic error reporting, I
| find your response logically beautiful. "One step away" - a
| perfect and reasonable description for this.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Typo fix: I meant "apps you can'T block from doing this" of
| course.
|
| Addition:
|
| I also hate apps and gadgets using "clouds" for jobs which can
| perfectly be done locally.
|
| E.g. I want a vitals tracking device to record my heart and
| sleep data but I am not buying any because they send that data
| to their servers, I want them to only send it to my PC where I
| would do the data science myself (and/or to my smartphone to a
| purely local app). I would pay a lot (up to e.g. what a
| beefiest new MacBook costs) for such a device if it were purely
| local and well-made (wouldn't break soon).
|
| I also want a vacuum robot which would build and use my
| apartment map without sending it to any cloud but there are no
| such models no matter how much I am willing to pay (I know a
| solution[1] for vacuum robots - some can be hacked to run the
| server part on themselves but I don't really have time for
| this). And there have recently been a leak of pictures made by
| vacuum robots which proves my paranoia is legitimate.
|
| Some genius has even invented a WC which analyzes your pee and
| stores your hormonal changes log in their cloud which is a
| great gift to conservative maniacs (I don't mean all
| conservatives are maniacs, some are awesome, there are many
| flavours of conservatism) which have just banned abortions and
| can now subpoena the company to find out you if you have
| secretly undergone an abortion in another state.
|
| Surely insurance companies and banks will also find a way to
| get your data and make your insurance and loans prohibitively
| expensive as soon as they find some clues you might have health
| risks.
|
| I am almost sure the problem of privacy negligence, every
| serious actor spying on people hoarding data, is going to
| become more and more serious up to a catastrophic point and
| hope it will get more and more attention soon.
|
| I used to be called a paranoid loon by fellow students for
| covering my laptop camera a decade ago, now almost everybody
| does this and my new laptops (HP EliteBook and ProBook) even
| came with built-in curtains on the cams.
|
| [1] https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo
| jmartrican wrote:
| Dropbox seems to use up a lot of resources on my laptop. I keep
| it turned off until I need to suck down or upload some recent
| files. I turn it right off again after using it.
| chrisyeah wrote:
| The discussion is from 2020/2021. That would have been good to
| mention in the title on HN.
| doersino wrote:
| I've been using https://github.com/samschott/maestral instead of
| Dropbox's client for the last year or so and it's been rock-
| solid.
| zeruch wrote:
| This looks quite cool.
| thijsvandien wrote:
| Works very well indeed. The only thing I miss is the ability to
| easily create public links from the GUI.
|
| TIL it _is_ possible from the command line, so perhaps I can
| make it work with Automator.
| api wrote:
| Anything like this for Google Drive? That client also used to
| be good but has become complete bloated trash in recent years.
|
| It seems like all chat, conference, and collaboration software
| must devolve into bloated slow buggy trash over time.
| password4321 wrote:
| https://rclone.org/ is only like maestral if you squint hard
| enough, but it does support Google Drive (and Dropbox).
| thoma4s wrote:
| If something is free, you're the product. But yeah this is bad
| conjuredbytes wrote:
| Dropbox isn't free
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| It just costs you all your data!
| otikik wrote:
| It can be disabled with an uninstall.
| [deleted]
| huggingmouth wrote:
| Synching telemetry can be disabled. In fact, it's disabled by
| default.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Can it? The article says disabling telemetry had no effect.
| Maybe this has changed.
| pritambaral wrote:
| Your parent is talking about Syncthing, an open-source P2P
| alternative, not Dropbox.
| landmass wrote:
| My limited syncing requirements are met with Signal. Put
| something into "Notes to Self" and it then exists anywhere I have
| Signal, which is on everything.
| mrjin wrote:
| Wow, uninstall dropbox then.
| mapcars wrote:
| Dropbox is still alive? wow
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Again self-regulation is not working
| Razengan wrote:
| Remember their dirty tricks in the past?
|
| How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac (1037 points on Sept 9, 2016, 423
| comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338
|
| Revealing Dropbox's dirty little security hack:
| https://applehelpwriter.com/2016/07/28/revealing-dropboxs-di...
|
| Dropbox Lied to Users About Data Security:
| https://www.wired.com/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/
| aborsy wrote:
| I usually share telemetry with open source software that I am
| happy with. Log reports, crashes, usage, etc, in Linux and so on.
|
| It's a good way to give back, and improve software that is often
| free. It's presumably anonymized and safe. I don't think we
| should be adversarial.
| mrobins wrote:
| What are good Dropbox alternatives for teams?
| CJefferson wrote:
| I'll be honest, I don't really see the complaint here.
|
| The telemetry goes to telemetry.dropbox.com. You get this
| telemetry because you have installed the Dropbox desktop app,
| which means Dropbox already has lots of access to your machine.
| If this telemetry just went back mixed with normal Dropbox
| communications (like most apps), would people even be aware of
| it?
|
| There doesn't seem to be any discussion of what the telemetry
| actually is, just annoyance it exists.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > I'll be honest, I don't really see the complaint here.
|
| There is no explicit consent.
| Tepix wrote:
| In particular, consent may be a requirement by the GDPR.
| alkonaut wrote:
| It's obvious from the discussion that the GDPR isn't an
| issue here as there is no PII involved (as should be the
| case with all telemetry)
| zamnos wrote:
| The GDPR lists IP addresses as PII, and not to be all
| "your IP address is leaking" but in order to send the
| telemetry, your computer's IP (or that of your VPN) is
| being sent to Dropbox, potentially to be logged.
| alkonaut wrote:
| That's not a GDPR issue other than if stored. And
| remember this is an app that already must send requests
| to the same place in order to function at all.
| zamnos wrote:
| Yes but because your computer is sending its IP to
| Dropbox, you can't say, a priori, make the claim that the
| GDPR isn't an issue.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Of course not. It might send your medical records too.
|
| It will send the IP regardless of whether telemetry is
| enabled. But they do claim that no PII is stored for
| telemetry. Whenever the topic of Telemetry comes up I try
| to keep to the discussion about properly anonymous
| telemetry, simply because that's where there is any
| discussion at all. If anyone transmit or stores anything
| they aren't entitled to it's obviously always wrong so
| that's not an interesting discussion.
|
| Dropbox of course already stores PII (your files) but
| that doesn't mean they can do so for other info or other
| purposes.
| zamnos wrote:
| Just because the DNS entry says telemetry in the name
| doesn't mean a thing. Just like if they'd called it
| medical-records-here.dropbox.com and were only sending
| telemetry to it.
|
| Whenever the topic of telemetry comes up, I try and point
| out that just because someone says it's just telemetry,
| it doesn't mean a damn thing. If anyone thinks it's not
| interesting because they think things are obviously
| always wrong, I ask them: what does telemetry mean to
| you? What does it mean to the company?
|
| Are you sure those two definitions are in 100% agreement?
| alkonaut wrote:
| If they were entirely transparent about what they
| transmitted yet didn't stick to that, then that would be
| bad.
|
| Similarly, they might have an opt out but not honor it
| (in the case of Dropbox it wouldn't be noticeable)
|
| So all those things aside, the interesting discussion is
| the discussion that assumes they are honest when they say
| they don't store any PII in telemetry. That means, for
| example that the IP isn't stored.
|
| "Telemetry" as a term means nothing about what's stored
| which is why I try to be specific and talk about
| "anonymous usage statistics and crash reports" or
| similar. Telemetry without PII tends to be exactly that.
| planede wrote:
| AFAIK, it's only an issue if it's actually logged. Also,
| pretty much all services need to know the IP address
| during a session. It's fine if it's only used for the
| purpose of providing the service and not logged.
| CJefferson wrote:
| But dropbox already has huge amounts of information about
| you, in particular the names, contents, and history of all of
| your files.
| zorked wrote:
| They have consent for that. It's not hard.
|
| Also consent to store does not imply consent to read,
| process, make use of.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I keep searching xkcd, but all my efforts are frustrated,
| and this is as close as I get:
|
| https://xkcd.com/908/
|
| I distinctly recall a webcomic in the past few years
| lampooning cloud storage. There was a guy who said "hey,
| there's this guy down the street who lets me keep stuff
| on shelves in his garage." "What does he charge you?"
| "Nothing, he says it's just cool if I keep it there." and
| then the stuff is sold off or tampered with, the guy is
| irate, and the moral of the story is essentially "why did
| you trust a random guy with a garage to keep your stuff?"
| zamnos wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1150/ ?
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| THANK YOU, zamnos! No wonder I couldn't find it. It was a
| current-events piece about a change in Instagram's TOS.
| Explanation here: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.
| php/1150:_Instagram
| sharken wrote:
| Exactly, as a paying user having the option to disable
| telemetry is not unreasonable.
|
| Too bad Dropbox does not see it that way.
| senko wrote:
| Indeed, as a paying user I would also want an option to
| disable them reading the files off my disk.
|
| To bad they just start scanning everything in ~/Dropbox.
| Xeamek wrote:
| That depends what telemetry though. Assuming this telemetry
| is purely about app's performance and behavior and is
| trully anonymous(I know that's big assumption, for sake of
| the argument let's believe it is the case), taking away
| from devs informations about whether or not the app is
| working well, is indeed quite unreasonable
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I see a trend of software engineers that don't see users as
| someone who they are providing service to - they see them
| as just one element of a machine they're optimizing to make
| their software better. They feel that the engineering quest
| itself is the most important thing in the world, so they
| feel entitled to any and all data they are technically
| capable of collecting.
|
| It's a shame. I wish more engineers would see things
| through Richard Stallman's eyes, and realize that software
| is supposed to serve its _users_ , not its _creators_. But,
| as the saying goes: "It is difficult to get a man to
| understand something, when his salary depends on his not
| understanding it."
| weberer wrote:
| If you asked me which part of the company decided to
| shove telemetry in the product, my last guess would be
| the software engineers.
| intelVISA wrote:
| SWEs in those camps are mostly "just following orders"
| I've heard.
| rcxdude wrote:
| There is a reason it's popular: it's extremely useful for
| software development to a) have actual hard data on how
| your software is being used, and b) have a large
| selection of crash data for debugging rare issues. If
| it's not the software engineers who want it, it's the
| technical management who see the immense value in having
| it.
| weberer wrote:
| You're forgetting the monetary incentives. It allows
| companies to collect personal data of every user and sell
| it to "our partners" to build larger marketing profiles.
| rcxdude wrote:
| This depends on what kind of data they're collecting. The
| most common kinds of telemetry data is not actually
| particularly useful for that, and usage of it for selling
| advertising, especially to third parties, would be
| contradictory to most privacy policies (now how much you
| trust that they are actually following their own policy
| is another matter: and dropbox does call out that they
| may try to use this data to upsell you on their own
| products).
|
| Nonetheless, the potential is there and GDPR does
| consider it personal data from the point of view of
| consent, so dropbox is almost certainly violating the
| rules here even if they do not sell the data for
| advertising (as unlike the actual data they store, it is
| not necessary for providing the service, merely useful to
| the company for improving their service). Such telemetry
| almost certainly requires an opt-out, and most likely
| should be an opt-in as far as GDPR is concerned.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I'm not sure.
|
| There was an opt-out telemetry proposal in Go [0], which
| caused a huge backlash. The proposal authors were so
| focused on the _benefits_ of the telemetry, that they did
| their best to invent all kinds of very convincing
| arguments why _their_ telemetry is okay, useful, not
| intrusive, etc. etc. They completely ignored the ethics
| of the problem - that _they are not entitled to users '
| data without consent_.
|
| It took a very dramatic reaction from the community to
| convince them that adding opt-out telemetry without
| users' explicit consent is a bad idea, no matter how
| "non-intrusive" and "helpful" it is.
|
| [0] https://github.com/golang/go/discussions/58409
| alkonaut wrote:
| It's polite to be transparent about telemetry, but it's not
| like there is a requirement in any regulation anywhere to ask
| for explicit consent (e.g. similar to how GDPR works when PII
| is involved)
| krono wrote:
| You're mixing several things together here. Transparency is
| one of GDPRs cornerstones and very much not just nice to
| provide, but a deeply serious and non-negotiable hard
| requirement regardless of how you legitimise the data
| collection.
| alkonaut wrote:
| What I'm saying is that the GDPR is irrelevant unless
| there is data collected that counts as PII. Collecting
| non PII isn't covered by the GDPR.
|
| So yes there are two things: GDPR which is irrelevant
| here, and storage of non-PII which should be done
| transparently because it's polite to be transparent, but
| not a regulatory requirement.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, to be fair, if there is no PII, the telemetry isn't
| relevant at all and nobody should be concerned by it.
| (Except for the people that are concerned they will A/B
| test their software into exhaustion and optimize it into
| an abomination; but that's not a loud crowd.)
|
| All the complaints are about them collecting PII. Even if
| they say they don't, the concern is that they could be
| lying, or change easily, and nobody would know.
| krono wrote:
| False, I will rephrase: it _is_ a regulatory requirement
| under the GDPR to disclose the fact that you are
| collecting data, to provide a detailed and easily
| accessible specification of the information contents, a
| precise definition of how this data is processed and
| used, and your legal justification(s) for doing so, and
| to do so for each separate type or kind of collection
| involving individuals, regardless of whether this
| includes any PII or not.
|
| The few exceptions that exist are only applicable in
| cases where there is no potentially identifiable data
| collected at all, which is obviously not the case here.
|
| Here is a very accessible (although non-official) GDPR
| resource that I've come across: https://gdpr-info.eu/
|
| Obligatory "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer :)
| alkonaut wrote:
| > it is a regulatory requirement to disclose the fact
| that you are collecting data
|
| Not if the data isn't PII, no. Not in any way shape or
| form.
|
| > The few exceptions that exist are only applicable in
| cases where there is no potentially identifiable data
| collected at all
|
| The whole point of collecting "anonymous usage data"
| (which is what telemetry usually does) is that it
| shouldn't be possible to attribute to a physical person,
| and thus not be PII. As an extreme example, you could
| take the most typical form of telemetry: a feature usage
| count. When a feature is used, the telemetry collects a
| (+1) for that feature. The only long term stored data is
| the total count N for each feature across the entire user
| base. Of course there is no PII stored.
|
| > which is obviously not the case here.
|
| Why do you say that it's "obviously" not the case, when
| there is no indication about what data it is, other than
| the Dropbox representative saying precisely that there is
| no PII collected so the GDPR isn't relevant? There may be
| PII (in which case they are both at fault for not
| disclosing, and complete asshats for lying in the support
| forum). But it would be a pretty uninteresting discussion
| once one assumes that...
|
| Obligatory "I'm not a lawyer either but I've implemented
| telemetry in software and had those implementations
| thuroughly analyzed by lawyers a couple of times"
| krono wrote:
| Ah gotcha, yes, you're right, except that only holds when
| you are not collecting any other data from the "subject"
| at all.
|
| The major differentiating factor here is that that
| Dropbox does in fact process PII - convenient storage and
| distribution of their customers digital life is their
| raison d'etre, after all, it's precisely what those
| people expect of Dropbox and pay them their monthly fee
| for.
|
| In this case, where telemetry is gathered by the same
| desktop application that is also a primary component of
| their legitimate and consented-to data processing
| activities no less, they would at minimum be required to
| specify what information goes where, how it is
| anonymised, and for what purpose they require it.
|
| I'm not assuming ill intent or unsanctioned data mining
| activities or anything of the sort, but whatever it is
| that they are collecting and doing is not as clear as it
| should be.
| philip1209 wrote:
| I finally got off of Dropbox recently in favor of the iCloud with
| "Advanced Data Protection", i.e. end-to-end encryption.
|
| People tend to think that "Tech Independence" [1] and "The Cloud"
| are at odds with each other. But, end-to-end encrypted services
| that sync via the cloud really are the best of both worlds -
| convenient and secure.
|
| [1] https://sive.rs/ti
| layer8 wrote:
| I run Boxcryptor (the unpaid version with local keys) on top of
| Dropbox. They have recently been acquired by Dropbox, so I'm
| hoping that Dropbox will be integrating E2EE as well.
|
| (Of course that doesn't solve the telemetry issue.)
| intelVISA wrote:
| E2EE telemetry ;)
| Pawka wrote:
| Is this still a case?
|
| The first comment in thread is from 2020, the last - from 2021.
| Now where I live is 2023.
|
| I don't have any relationship with Dropbox, but we should be
| precise that this information might be outdated.
| Syssiphus wrote:
| I checked my pi-hole query log and couldn't find any reference
| to the named telemetry address.
| hybridtupel wrote:
| I can imagine they "fixed" it by just sending the telemetry
| now to the TLD so nobody complains any longer.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Do people still use Dropbox? I feel like I almost never hear
| recommendations for it.
|
| I personally abandoned Dropbox when they introduced a limit on
| the amount of devices you could use for free plans, and the
| cheapest plan was like 120EUR/year for 2 TB.
| accrual wrote:
| I use it to backup game saves from a Docker container. The
| binary is installed on the server but otherwise I just use the
| web interface to check on things.
|
| It's pretty neat, but that's all I use it for these days. Still
| have my original 2GB account from when Dropbox was new.
| haunter wrote:
| Indeed the price is my problem. I like the functionality of
| Dropbox but I don't need 2TB and I won't pay 12EUR for that. I
| wish they have lower tiers.
|
| iDrive is the only alternative I found that more or less works
| the same. Maybe Google Drive too but I try to avoid them (maybe
| if there was an option bundled with Youtube Premium...)
|
| When I tried MS OneDrive messed up the file dates, Amazon
| CloudDrive did the same (and also got shutdown since). And
| Apple iCloud is just too barebones and not really meant for
| sharing if someone is not using a Mac.
| peterbraden wrote:
| I'd love to be able to get rid of it completely, but I don't
| know of a good solution for syncing files to an iOS device from
| a linux machine.
|
| Recommendations very welcome!
| michael9k wrote:
| Maybe I just have a different view of pricing, but I find
| EUR120 a year for 2TB with unlimited versions, ability to share
| files of any size, rock solid syncing on all my devices etc to
| be extremely cheap!
| ketzu wrote:
| Oh they increased to 2TB? (Seems it was around 2019... wow I
| am not up to date! https://venturebeat.com/business/dropbox-
| increases-plus-plan... )
|
| Back when I decided which cloud storage to use, all the big
| ones were at 1TB and dorpbox was the most expensive with the
| least features, while microsofts offer included office 365
| for nearly half the price.
|
| Right now it seems: MS 6$/mo for 1TB + Office
| (https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| ww/microsoft-365/onedrive/compa...) Dropbox 10$/mo for 2TB
| (https://www.dropbox.com/plans) Google 12$/mo for 2TB+some
| smaller things like calls (https://workspace.google.com/prici
| ng.html?utm_source=drivefo...)
|
| There obviously are smaller companies offering storage too,
| which seems to be around 4~5$/(mo and TB), eg
| https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storage-pricing-
| plans.html?peri... https://icedrive.net/plans
| https://www.sync.com/pricing-individual/
|
| Overall I'd say its not a terrible offer after the increase
| to 2TB, but on the expensive side compared to competitors.
| vvillena wrote:
| The main advantage for Dropbox is that file sync works
| flawlessly. I've had issues with Onedrive and Google Drive
| in the past. Maybe they fixed those, but I can't trust them
| anymore.
| rmm wrote:
| I know right. I tried to move to OneDrive and within a
| few hours had multiple "conflicted versions" or whatever.
| ajolly wrote:
| That's been my experience with syncthing sadly
| michael9k wrote:
| Agree. I am forced to use OneDrive when I do consultation
| work for one of my customers, still works like crap
| compared to Dropbox with slow syncing etc.
| oriolid wrote:
| In my experience syncing with pCloud is at least as good
| as with Dropbox. Google Drive is still quite bad.
| Hamuko wrote:
| My problem is that I don't need 2 TB. I had like 10 GB of
| files on Dropbox. And Google offers 100 GB of Drive storage
| for 20EUR/year.
| tikkabhuna wrote:
| I still like it. Its vendor agnostic. I find the scanning
| documents ability works well on iOS. Not really sure what else
| I could be using to be honest.
| ycombinete wrote:
| I haven't found a better option for file sync (especially not
| delta sync)
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Do people still use Dropbox?
|
| Yep but it's mostly because I have many things which integrate
| with it -- loads of IFTTT recipes, apps, and sites that
| automatically sync things for you. If iCloud had a public API
| that people could integrate with the same way, I'd probably
| drop Dropbox at some point.
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| iCloud does have a public API:
| https://developer.apple.com/icloud/icloud-drive/.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| I don't think iOS / macOS SDKs count as a "public API". I
| mean, obviously, a HTTP API that anyone can auth against
| and perform file operations against - like the Dropbox API.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I only use Dropbox because Brother Webconnect does not
| support iCloud Drive.
|
| https://www.brother-usa.com/brother-web-connect
|
| Very convenient that Brother MFC machines can automatically
| upload OCR'd scans to your Dropbox/onedrive/box/google drive
| account, but I would like to only use iCloud Drive. Wonder if
| Apple is dropping the ball on that functionality though.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Wonder if Apple is dropping the ball on that
| functionality though.
|
| They definitely are but I can understand why they don't
| want to be bothered supporting something like that. Plus I
| think the time to be starting that was about a decade
| ago...
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| rmm wrote:
| We use Dropbox business, anyone recommend a good replacement.
|
| Main features I want is version history and easy recovery.
| teepo wrote:
| You could try Box. It has really good enterprise controls as
| well.
| layer8 wrote:
| NextCloud is probably the closest thing.
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| I honestly recommend you just stay with Dropbox.. there's no
| fantastic alternatives
| haswell wrote:
| I was a very early user of Dropbox but I've fallen out of love
| with the product over the years, and while I still have an
| account, I've avoided installing the clients for awhile now.
|
| I've been migrating things over to Synology Drive hosted in my
| closet, and the UX for this is a lot like Dropbox (in a good
| way).
|
| Combined with Tailscale, I get all of the convenience without the
| ick, and a hell of a lot more storage for that matter.
| redder23 wrote:
| Don't use any if these proprietary shit apps in the first place.
| I find it silly to complain about things like that. Even if they
| have opt-out or even opt-in. They will eventually change it, they
| will abuse you. They will have "bugs" that leak data. You can
| only trust open source. And there are plenty of alternatives,
| that you can self host.
| eviks wrote:
| Can you list top-3 fully-featured Dropbox alternatives of the
| plenty?
| alkonaut wrote:
| I don't want to self host. I don't even want to self-setup some
| cloud blob store to which my open source can sync. I want
| something that is free as in beer and zero setup for myself.
| Happy to take suggestions but Dropbox does seem to fit.
| fongol wrote:
| Any analysis on what is being sent to their telemetry service?
| Doesn't seem to be in that thread.
|
| I don't see why people are getting so irked about this, without
| knowing any details of what data Dropbox is receiving.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I get that for some classes of "local-only" apps like compilers
| (famous from a recent discussion on the same topic), network
| communication can be surprising and therefore feel unnecessary.
| But for an app whose sole purpose is sending and receiving lots
| of sensitive private data to Dropbox servers, who has the energy
| to be outraged that there is also some other anonymous data sent
| such as program crash info?
|
| I mean Dropbox has the contents of my files should I find it
| creepy or unnecessary that they know my RAM amount or what the
| last exception was?
| MereInterest wrote:
| For any local program, I can block its access to the network
| and still use it. For a program whose functionality requires
| internet access, I can either inspect every outgoing packet for
| exfiltrated data, or I can choose to trust some programs to be
| non-malicious based on their reputation. That trust is
| incredibly fragile, and unannounced spying/telemetry breaks it.
| kokanee wrote:
| I'm wondering where the line is between acceptable and
| unacceptable logs. Obviously no one appreciates analytics used
| by marketing teams, but virtually every internet service has
| logs used by engineers (which seem to be what this post is
| about). A few factors that seem relevant:
|
| - Is the service running locally?
|
| - Do we trust/expect that the data is not used for marketing
| (i.e. would the user have complained if the domain was "error-
| reporting.dropbox.com")?
|
| - Is the data anonymous (think twice, everyone who has IPs or
| user IDs in request logs)
|
| - Did we agree to relevant ToS or privacy policies?
|
| If we think carefully about this, I'd bet that most people here
| have used or even implemented some form of logging that has
| privacy problems.
| alkonaut wrote:
| It's not that difficult to make anonymous (usually
| pseudonymous) usage stats. Of course you don't store IPs,
| computer names, user names, emails, detailed geographical
| data etc. I think in the past this was a lot messier but
| these days with GDPR it's quite easy to draw the line.
| Basically store nothing that is individual, nor enough data
| (entropy) associated with one pseudonymous user that they
| could be identified as individuals.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I am on the fence as to whether I agree with you, but I'll
| embellish a certain aspect: these folks keep citing how the
| number of DNS lookups (what pihole reports/blocks) is
| extraordinary, exceeding all other vendors they use, which says
| pretty much _nothing_ about the nature of the payload other
| than that Dropbox likely has very granular client uptime data.
| The client could cache the DNS response instead of doing so
| many lookups, and some amount of rage would disappear.
| xpil wrote:
| I actually enjoy Dropbox - for a flat fee of ~EUR10/month I get
| 2TB of cloud space plus the synchronization across unlimited
| devices. I don't mind the telemetry thing, at least not too much.
|
| However, their approach to Android is absolutely ridiculous.
| There is no files or folders synchronization - at least not at
| the OS level, like in Windows or Linux. If I need to access my
| Dropbox files on an Android device, the only way is to do it via
| the Dropbox app, and it is clunky. The biggest pain point is that
| I cannot use 3rd party apps to open a folder in my Dropbox
| storage - I can open a single file, fine, but for example
| Obsidian is out of reach as it requires opening an entire folder,
| which is currently not possible.
|
| (I can create an offline copy of the folder on the device and
| open that one but it defies the purpose of having a sophisticated
| synchronization software).
|
| So I think at some point I will start investigating alternatives.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Wouldn't get this with a FTP account, mounting it locally with
| curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
| donio wrote:
| BrandonM was right all along. Nowadays you'd probably use
| "rclone mount" or sshfs though.
|
| (For anyone wondering the parent is channeling
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)
| bachmeier wrote:
| [flagged]
| stewartmcgown wrote:
| Excellent reference
| windock wrote:
| For reference, it is referred to the first comment under
| announcement of Dropbox
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
| scarface74 wrote:
| This is the HN equivalent of "No wireless. Less space than
| the nomad. Lame" https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026
| jareklupinski wrote:
| second comment:
|
| > Plus, you can use it as a portable disk. No "content
| protection". Yay!
|
| good times
| mikae1 wrote:
| Or use an open source client without telemetry such as
| https://maestral.app tu
| fullstop wrote:
| Hey, thanks for this. I didn't know that it existed and it
| gets around the limits for the maximum number of devices with
| the official client without a paid plan. I had whatever the
| max number of sync'd devices + 1 before they limited the
| device count. It wasn't a big deal because the last device
| was infrequently used, but it was annoying that the terms
| changed.
| generalizations wrote:
| Eh. Just set up syncthing. Came back to it about a year ago,
| and it's worked flawlessly across 5+ devices with ~8 synced
| folders ever since.
| jwr wrote:
| Syncthing is indeed amazing. I've been using it for the
| last years, had some problems way back, but haven't seen a
| single issue over the last year or so.
| digital_voodoo wrote:
| Worth mentioning that Syncthing doesn't have a cloud part,
| while DB does. That said, I've been running it since the
| very beginning, even before it became public/known, and it
| had never failed me so far.
| generalizations wrote:
| Syncthing does encrypted nodes now, so I have an
| encrypted laptop node running offsite; that, coupled with
| a mostly-on desktop pc and an always-on headless mac mini
| running void, and I have a 100+GB 'cloud' with syncthing.
|
| Honestly, the best way I found to prevent sync errors is
| to make sure there's continuity...that there's always
| some computer, somewhere, that's running and knows what
| the latest version actually is.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Worth mentioning that Syncthing doesn't have a cloud
| part, while DB does.
|
| I see that as a huge plus for Syncthing.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I use that to sync savestates between RetroArch on mobile,
| desktop and laptop. no need to worry and I can resume my
| games wherever I am.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| SyncThing, while indeed amazing and my goto for personal
| file sharing, might not go well with your corporate
| policies. An alternate program, like InSync, allows you to
| disable telemetry on DropBox, OneDrive and Google Drive at
| the same time, and is easier to justify.
| dspillett wrote:
| "On other platforms, you can install the Python package or a
| Docker image based on Alpine Linux" isn't going to fly for a
| lot of users, though maybe there is quite an overlap between
| people who know the details of why they might want to install
| it and people with the ability to.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| If you're using Windows at this point, you must have
| decided that this sort of telemetry is acceptable for you.
| It's about the same level as the stuff you can't disable in
| current versions of that OS.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Other platforms being Windows? :^)
|
| That's a valid point though, I hope somebody contributes a
| Windows GUI at some point.
| japanuspus wrote:
| This. Recently came back to macOS after a decade on the other
| side, and one surprise was how terrible the official Dropbox
| client was. Installed Maestral instead and it just works --
| just like Dropbox used to.
|
| <begin rant>I see Dropbox as one of the biggest failures of
| the VC model. If only they had been bootstrapped, they would
| probably have stuck with their initial sync offering: A
| perfectly executed solution to a problem everybody has. And a
| small team could have made a good living here -- even with
| reasonably priced non-free options. Instead I imagine some VC
| partner convinced them to "grow their market" (or maybe
| "prepare for cloud"), and now they are descending into
| irrelevance. <end rant>
| mmargerum wrote:
| i've never had a single issue with dropbox on 3 macs in 10
| years. Plenty of issues with google drive and one drive (or
| whatever it's newest name is).
| dunham wrote:
| Yeah, I bailed around the time they switched to a gigantic
| electron app and increased the prices with no added
| functionality that I wanted.
| xorcist wrote:
| Sure, but without VC money the product space wouldn't exist
| at all, at least not as a free service.
|
| Who doesn't want free storage? No one, that's who.
|
| See also: everything from Sourceforge to Docker Hub. Very
| few can complete the transition into a paid service.
|
| The important distinction is whether you sell a product or
| a service. Dropbox is clearly a service, but it's easy to
| envision a product instead.
|
| Had the user paid for storage up front, the product would
| be incentivized to support multiple backends to be able to
| compete on cost. But it doesn't, because it is the storage
| service that is the actual thing being sold.
| Fatnino wrote:
| People have been burned enough times by now that any fly-
| by-night that shows up promising free storage gets taken
| with a huge grain of salt.
|
| Why would I upload my data for you to hold for free if
| history shows you are going to be gone in 6 months?
|
| So to answer your question "Who doesn't want free
| storage?", everyone who's been burned before, that's who.
| dns_snek wrote:
| ...Or worse, they start mining and monetizing your
| personal data under the pretense of a "free" service.
| There's no free lunch.
| geophile wrote:
| Yeah, I remember when they were briefly going to solve the
| problem of being a universal translator of file formats.
| They announced this at a conference I attended and I could
| see the thought bubbles of everyone in the audience: What?
| That will fail, are you nuts?
| mavam wrote:
| I wish there would be a Google Drive equivalent of this.
| prussian wrote:
| If you're using Linux with GNOME desktop, GVFS can mount
| Google Drives automatically once you set your google
| account up in GNOME Online Accounts.
| butz wrote:
| Why there's no similar alternative for ProtonDrive? Missing
| public API? Too secure?
| rekabis wrote:
| Dangnabbit: no Windows option.
| [deleted]
| rsync wrote:
| ... sshfs pointed to your rsync.net account.
|
| Your _immutable_ daily snapshots would be mounted in your local
| file system in:
|
| (Mount point)/.zfs/snapshot
|
| ... and even Mallory can't alter them since they are read-only.
| AH4oFVbPT4f8 wrote:
| I bet you could setup all that up over a weekend roo
| donio wrote:
| If you go with a modern equivalent ("rclone mount" or sshfs)
| you could probably set those up faster than the Dropbox
| client.
| butz wrote:
| Alright, I've cleared some time on the weekend, time to switch to
| some alternative. I don't need much space, a few GBs are enough.
| What's the best paid option for Linux?
| smittywerben wrote:
| I stopped using dropbox after finding it quarantines files. You
| won't know about this until you try to migrate off Dropbox. It
| just gives me the creeps now.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| What does this mean in this context? I tried searching but
| couldn't find anything other than antivirus software sometimes
| quarantined files in their Dropbox folder which isn't really a
| Dropbox issue. Are Dropbox deleting files without notification?
| mtmail wrote:
| For me it was watching my desktop folder. If I created a
| screenshot there would suddenly be a notification window asking
| me if I wanted to upload/share it via Dropbox. Contacted their
| support, you couldn't switch it off and they didn't understand
| why such notifications would annoy a user.
| willis936 wrote:
| I stopped when I stopped being comfortable with them looking at
| my data. My sensibilities changed and software options had
| advanced to the point that the activation energy of switching
| to an E2EE solution had been surpassed. I use self-hosted
| nextcloud + wireguard + B2 encrypted backup. It's not perfect,
| it's more setup on each device (no longer a single auth away
| from the data), but it's well worth it to me.
|
| There's a market here. Idk how big. Apple seems to think
| there's a market here too. If they offered larger sizes I might
| be tempted to go all in on Apple.
| mikae1 wrote:
| Use an open source Dropbox client such as https://maestral.app
| InCityDreams wrote:
| ...not for windows, though.
| snvzz wrote:
| You know what else has telemetry that cannot be disabled?
|
| Microsoft Windows.
|
| It is about time something is done about it.
| trollied wrote:
| Stopped using Dropbox a long time ago. Their constant "marketing"
| emails were bordering on scammy "Your dropbox is almost full!"
| etc - I try not to deal with companies that play these games.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| The other day I noticed that the Dropbox icon had a red
| notification dot. Uh oh, maybe I'm running out of space.
|
| Nope, it was an ad for using Dropbox to scan my tax documents
| or some shit like that.
|
| I contacted support to ask about disabling future fake
| notifications, and they tried to claim that malware could be
| responsible.
|
| I suppose in a way, they're not wrong...
| lightedman wrote:
| That's exactly why I quit using Dropbox. I have TWO pictures in
| my Dropbox, no way in hell it's almost full. You lie to me in
| your advertising, you don't get my money, period.
| fuzzehchat wrote:
| rsync.net seem to be spaffing a lot on advertising, anyine ot any
| experience of them ?
|
| 1TB bonus if you sign up, but haow good is their product?
| green-salt wrote:
| I really want to try their ZFS Send offering but minimum buy in
| at 4TB for $60 a month isn't worth it yet to me.
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