Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 112 posts

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#21

Post by giancarlostoro »

neogodless wrote: post #10

"For teams to work across the internet, they need to be able to see who else views the document on their team." "Got it, agreed." "What if they make it public, and the team is anyone on the internet?" "Same! Name, email, maybe more?!" No. No! If something is shared publicly, who views it should not be public knowledge. Or it should be screamed in blaring, blinking, marquee high-contrast banner across the screen to ev…

I'd be OK with just part of their email or something, or only first or last name (but never both, or switched). It should only be 1 bit of information that if it looks off it would alert someone that the link has been compromised.

On the other hand I feel like Google Docs does the same thing.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#22

Post by plg »

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ...

so what are my alternatives if I literally only want:

- a folder that syncs on my devices

- the ability to share a folder with others

- cross-platform

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#23

Post by imtringued »

daniel_iversen wrote: post #6
gdhbcc wrote: post #3

This looks like a GDPR breach. Does anyone know where i can find the details for the dropbox GDPR representative?

Why is it a GDPR breach when a Dropbox screen clearly explains to the user clicking the link that other users will see your details if you proceed? (Just curious, it may well be an issue, I just don’t know how).

Just read the tweet. It's not just any user. It's everyone on the internet.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#24

Post by martin_a »

plg wrote: post #22

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ... so what are my alternatives if I literally only want: - a folder that syncs on my devices - the ability to share a folder with others - cross-platform

Maybe something like a self-hosted NextCloud/OwnCloud? Although integration into the operating systems is not as good as with Dropbox, I completely switched to a self-hosted NextCloud and everything works fine without bloat.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#25

Post by jhbadger »

plg wrote: post #22

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ... so what are my alternatives if I literally only want: - a folder that syncs on my devices - the ability to share a folder with others - cross-platform

Box? Or is that even too heavy for your tastes, given that they've been adding "features" to their product too.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#26

Post by abtinf »

plg wrote: post #22

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ... so what are my alternatives if I literally only want: - a folder that syncs on my devices - the ability to share a folder with others - cross-platform

Keybase. I really wish they would get their act together and let me pay them for the service.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#27

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

AznHisoka wrote: post #20
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #4

I had a chance to join a machine learning team at Dropbox a few years ago. Ultimately what made me decline was this feeling that everyone in the office was sort of a zombie on autopilot. Nobody was excited about anything, all the use cases being kicked around for machine learning were extremely contrived recommendation and automation features that seemed like they had no real product research or stakeholder support t…

Dropbox to me seems like a one-trick pony trying desperately to expand their market. It's a cloud storage system. Ideally for consumers, not enterprises (who already have Google Drive, or AWS if you're storing web objects). I know they acquired HelloSign awhile back, but who the heck would want to use both DropBox and HelloSign together?

I believe their goal is to expand to enterprise customers who would use Dropbox as a replacement for something like Google Drive. They seem to hypothesize that the way to win market share is through collaboration intelligence features and coordination features. I think it’s a bad hypothesis and really if they have a way to win market share it’s purely by being a cheaper / more basic option, then maybe start-ups or small businesses would choose it.

But this goes against the premium pricing and branding they have created for consumer storage plans, and I think hamstrings them from doing anything else really.

And at the end of the day, if Google is worried you’re underpricing them, they have way more levers to pull on to retain or win back customers, and more cushion to absorb losses.

Just seems like a bad business strategy by Dropbox all around. Probably should just focus on how to deliver consumer storage accounts with lower and lower prices instead.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#28

Post by sascha_sl »

abtinf wrote: post #26
plg wrote: post #22

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ... so what are my alternatives if I literally only want: - a folder that syncs on my devices - the ability to share a folder with others - cross-platform

Keybase. I really wish they would get their act together and let me pay them for the service.

They're very clearly not aiming at being professional, with this trashing focus on random features.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#29

Post by 52-6F-62 »

plg wrote: post #22

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ... so what are my alternatives if I literally only want: - a folder that syncs on my devices - the ability to share a folder with others - cross-platform

Does any viable open-source option exist that could be self-hosted?

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#30

Post by neogodless »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #21
neogodless wrote: post #10

"For teams to work across the internet, they need to be able to see who else views the document on their team." "Got it, agreed." "What if they make it public, and the team is anyone on the internet?" "Same! Name, email, maybe more?!" No. No! If something is shared publicly, who views it should not be public knowledge. Or it should be screamed in blaring, blinking, marquee high-contrast banner across the screen to ev…

I'd be OK with just part of their email or something, or only first or last name (but never both, or switched). It should only be 1 bit of information that if it looks off it would alert someone that the link has been compromised. On the other hand I feel like Google Docs does the same thing.

I believe the way Google Docs works is that if you share something publicly, people show up as "Anonymous Animal" and that's about the limit of what you can learn about them, unless they are on the same G Suite account with you.

Although I think you might have the option to "reveal your Google Account" to other users/viewers of the shared document.

Post reply on HN