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Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

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

#51
I use two Chrome profile, one for work and one for personal. I keep them separate by not logging into personal account in with the work profile etc.

Whenever I open Dropbox Paper with my work Chrome profile, it shows to have access to my personal Dropbox. These two are separate Dropbox accounts with separate emails associated to them. Yet, I'm able to access them since I sync a shared folder from my personal account on the same computer as the work Dropbox account (Work Dropbox account being the account thats logged into on the computer).

Seems like UX overtook security in this aspect since I didn't explicitly want to "connect" both accounts outside of shared folder.

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

#52
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

I'll also vouch for syncthing. It's the best file sharing application. It works cross platform, has windows, linux, android and mac clients. I can choose to share specific folders for each device. I have one set up on a DO droplet and seamlessly syncs across all my devices. Also, when two devices are on the same LAN, it discovers the devices automatically. Couldn't praise it enough! https://syncthing.net/

I have this running on my personal computer, my work laptop, and my phone. I almost never have any issues, and I can work seamlessly from any device. It's great. I will also use it to share project folders with other people, and again, no serious problems.

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

#53
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

I have a Synology NAS with their "Synology Drive" software. The UI polish isn't great, but the functionality has been solid in my experience. Bonus points for keeping my data entirely local aside from the dynamic DNS piece to connect in remotely.

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

#54
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

I use Dropbox and just not paper

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

#57
Not only that, but Dropbox lets you pick any publicly visible document that's been viewed by a large number of people and easily spam them simply by writing @doc.

I may have just pissed off a lot of people with my experiment :(

I realised immediately afterwards how reckless that was, but Dropbox - WTF? Why is this even allowed?

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

#58
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

https://www.Sync.com (full disclosure, I work there).

Unfortunately, it is only partially cross platform (no Linux client) :-(

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

#59

Not only that, but Dropbox lets you pick any publicly visible document that's been viewed by a large number of people and easily spam them simply by writing @doc. I may have just pissed off a lot of people with my experiment :( I realised immediately afterwards how reckless that was, but Dropbox - WTF? Why is this even allowed?

Thanks for the spam!

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

#60
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

Seconded. I still cannot find a decent alternative, if I add

- not self-hosted, but hosted by someone big enough to have a decent security team.

I don't want to take care of the security of this myself, nor do I want to rely on some mostly unknown 3 people startup.

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