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Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

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Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#191

Post by eloisius »

simultsop wrote: post #127
eloisius wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 befor…

nice setup, do you maintain the project too often? Does it go obsolete due to any update? Or is that just ssh and scp?

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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#192

Post by alkonaut »

zamnos wrote: post #145
alkonaut wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#193

Post by JohnFen »

ihateyouall123 wrote: post #187
JohnFen wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Interesting. I wonder why our experiences are so radically different?

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#194

Post by ajolly »

rmm wrote: post #72
vvillena wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know right. I tried to move to OneDrive and within a few hours had multiple “conflicted versions” or whatever.

That's been my experience with syncthing sadly

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#195

Post by JohnFen »

adolph wrote: post #161
hunter2_ wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

> 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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#196

Post by zimpenfish »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #126
zimpenfish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

> 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...

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#197

Post by kevinmgranger »

netruk44 wrote: post #151
dreamcompiler wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#198

Post by marcosdumay »

alkonaut wrote: post #75
krono wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#199

Post by rsync »

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.

… 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.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#200

Post by nottorp »

JohnFen wrote: post #193
ihateyouall123 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting. I wonder why our experiences are so radically different?

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.

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