Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#131

Post by hunter2_ » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:01 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #125

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #19

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 pe…

>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.

That's only if your computer is configured to automatically run whatever autorun.ini specifies, which it really should not be.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#132

Post by LatticeAnimal » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:12 PM UTC

w0m wrote: post #130

newaccount74 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 iO…

> 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.

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

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#133

Post by hybridtupel » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:14 PM UTC

Syssiphus wrote: post #42

Pawka wrote: post #6

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 I don't have any relationship with Dropbox, but we should be precise that this information might be outdated.

I checked my pi-hole query log and couldn't find any reference to the named telemetry address.

I can imagine they “fixed” it by just sending the telemetry now to the TLD so nobody complains any longer.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#134

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

hunter2_ wrote: post #131

lotsofpulp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That's only if your computer is configured to automatically run whatever autorun.ini specifies, which it really should not be.

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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#135

Post by epalm » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

popey wrote: post #34

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.

What end-user friendliness is missing from syncthing?

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#136

Post by dreamcompiler » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:20 PM UTC

popey wrote: post #34

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.

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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#137

Post by fullstop » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:20 PM UTC

mikae1 wrote: post #39

aunty_helen wrote: post #15

Wouldn't get this with a FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

Or use an open source client without telemetry such as https://maestral.app ㋡

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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#138

Post by jwr » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:20 PM UTC

generalizations wrote: post #115

mikae1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or use an open source client without telemetry such as https://maestral.app ㋡

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.

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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#139

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:21 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #87

newaccount74 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 iO…

Möbius Sync is more IAP cancer, unfortunately.

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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#140

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 1:24 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #90

p-e-w wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.