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Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

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Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

#111

Post by SifJar »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #88
KingOfCoders wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with the ads for Amazon videos on Amazon Prime. They are ads and I don't want ads. But they don't see it that way (don't get me started on the forced watching of texts on Blue Rays).

Honestly, the most annoying thing about this is when they show you an advert for a series that you have already watched. I mean it's not like they don't have the data already...

The ones that really bug me are the generic "Prime Video" ads. Not advertising a particular show, just telling me how great the service I am already subscribed to is...

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

#112

Post by SifJar »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #107
KingOfCoders wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with the ads for Amazon videos on Amazon Prime. They are ads and I don't want ads. But they don't see it that way (don't get me started on the forced watching of texts on Blue Rays).

I personally don't mind the ads on Amazon Prime because they're instantly skippable and do actually show things I might be interested in. Plus they don't show random shit like ads for a car or a TV or something. I don't sit and browse Amazon (because the browsing experience on Amazon prime is dogshit), so I go straight to anything I want to watch on there. The only opportunity to discover new shows on there is usuall…

"instantly skippable" depends on device I think. For a long time, there was no "Skip" button in the Roku app, you could only manually forward through it. It has now been added, but very possible there are apps on other devices still missing that feature

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

#113

Post by m-p-3 »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #53
Ensorceled wrote: post #18

I left dropbox when they changed the full page upsell to "dropbox business" so that I couldn't easily figure out how to skip it and get on with my work. I had a paid pro account at the time. I actually had a conversation with a product manager; I checked the yes you can contact me when I cancelled my account. They simply refused to admit that an upsell was a advertisement and that disrupting my workflow on my paid, p…

Same with the ads for Amazon videos on Amazon Prime. They are ads and I don't want ads. But they don't see it that way (don't get me started on the forced watching of texts on Blue Rays).

They're annoying, I don't want a trailer recommending me stuff before I watch something, there's already recommendations showing up visually in the list of contents when you choose something..

And yes Amazon, they are ads.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

#114

Post by laumars »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #107
KingOfCoders wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with the ads for Amazon videos on Amazon Prime. They are ads and I don't want ads. But they don't see it that way (don't get me started on the forced watching of texts on Blue Rays).

I personally don't mind the ads on Amazon Prime because they're instantly skippable and do actually show things I might be interested in. Plus they don't show random shit like ads for a car or a TV or something. I don't sit and browse Amazon (because the browsing experience on Amazon prime is dogshit), so I go straight to anything I want to watch on there. The only opportunity to discover new shows on there is usuall…

I don’t think I’ve ever received an ad on Prime Video. Is it an American thing? Do they happen in the U.K. too?

It might be the case that my DNS server (basically PiHole but something I built before PiHole was a thing) is blocking them. However it doesn’t stop inlined ads from YouTube, 4oD, Twitch and other streaming / on demand services.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

#115

Post by ubermonkey »

Ensorceled wrote: post #18

I left dropbox when they changed the full page upsell to "dropbox business" so that I couldn't easily figure out how to skip it and get on with my work. I had a paid pro account at the time. I actually had a conversation with a product manager; I checked the yes you can contact me when I cancelled my account. They simply refused to admit that an upsell was a advertisement and that disrupting my workflow on my paid, p…

Marketing droids are the WORST.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

#116

Post by szszrk »

pgt wrote: post #10

Hmm. My Dropbox Pro subscription renewal is coming up. Is there an alternative to Dropbox that isn't iCloud or Google Drive? I would like to pay for Tarsnap but I don't understand 250 picodollars / byte-month.

I really enjoy pcloud. It's simple, fast (I'm looking at your shitty galleries, OneDrive) and has a snappy mobile and linux app.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

#117

Post by switch007 »

merlinscholz wrote: post #11
beastman82 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not following. What's wrong with oauth?

When Google's AI (=RNG) decides to terminate your account (maybe you typed a few too many comments on YouTube, this has happened to people), you'll lose every service for which you used Google to sign in with. Also, the usual tracking stuff.

Don't websites usually create an association between a local user (in their DB) and an oauth2 account, linked by the email address? And then all your data is linked to the local DB user. I guess it's a bigger threat if you don't use your own domain for email.

EDIT: I'm talking about sites that also have their own local user db of course, so you could just do a password reset.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

#119

Post by ffpip »

grishka wrote: post #43

I really wish mobile OSes would allow you to grant apps permissions but serve fake data, (that's important!) without giving the app the ability to tell the difference. Just so it appears to the app that you've given the permission, when you in fact have not. This would solve this entire class of problems and then some. So, for example: - App "has" access to contacts, but the system returns that you have none. - App "…

OPPO's colourOS as this.

> The Personal Information Protection feature is a very clever way to bypass this situation. You can turn on protection for call logs, contacts, messages, and events. Once protection is enabled, ColorOS 11 will send apps empty information, tricking the app into accessing the blank data.

https://www.xda-developers.com/oppo-coloros11-privacy/

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login

#120

Post by dmd »

grishka wrote: post #63
tomsmeding wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While for contacts and location that would be a good feature (I agree!), I'm not so sure about storage. It may be nice for certain rogue apps (or ones that request permissions they don't actually need) to give them /dev/null without them knowing, but that may actually result in bugs and unstable behaviour if apps are written to expect working storage. Storage doesn't have a built-in failure mode like contacts and loc…

Okay, you're probably right. It might be a better option to give an app a sandboxed storage location instead, just so the files it put there remain there because it might expect to find them there later.

... isn't that exactly what access to storage does? Do any (mobile) platforms give access to NON sandboxed storage?
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