Interesting that not but a week or two ago there was a post on HN stating that dropbox had the best programmers in the industry.
Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
31–40 of 101 posts
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
#32rsync + a bash script doesn't sound so bad now. (I don't give a fuck what the market or normies want)
There are stuff like NextCloud now, that you can run by yourself. Rsync + a bash script is horrible to get going in a mobile device. (What is the fault of the mobile OSes, and if you can get by with a less hostile one, great for you.) Those open-core ones put some work on it.
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Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
#33I just finished using rclone to pull down my whole Dropbox last night. I'm closing my account today. Their app was a piece of crap that never worked for me anyway. I'm going to look at rsync.net simply because their people hang out on here.
Note depending on the amount of storage, rsync.net is substantially more expensive. For $100 a year you can get 2TB of storage with Google Drive, which works flawlessly with rclone. Additionally, for roughly $80 you can get 15+months of Office 365 Family which provides 1TB of storage each for up to 6 users which also works with rclone and restic.
For the same storage with rsync.net you could be looking at $500.00/month, and I believe that is with single-location storage.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
#34I've gotten into the habit of being born on January 1, 1970. Seems like a good enough date to me.
I always like to see how old I can make myself. 1902? (The 2038 problem in reverse.) 1776? 5 B.C.? My experience is that I can usually only go back to the 1930s.
Ha, I do that as well. They're almost always menus and so I just pick the bottom-most box. Steam thinks I'm 120 years old.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
#35I've been seeing age checks like this more and more. Recently the FTC came down hard[0] on Kurbo (aka Weight Watchers) for not doing enough/anything to stop children under 13 (COPPA) from making accounts. Since they're not confident there's no children with accounts, now all Kurbo's data is tainted and they have to delete all user data and destroy any "algorithms" derived from that data. Historically Dropbox probably…
OK but if you read the link you included WW specifically MADE an app for children and collected the data: "the agency... marketed a weight loss app for use by children as young as eight and then collected their personal information without parental permission." That is pretty wilful -- so we can be confident they have or had data targeted from children. Dropbox on the other hand -- I'm not sure how that case is simil…
Fair point! That does seem like a key difference. But I still wouldn't be surprised if all tech industry legal/compliance teams have been spooked by this. Also under COPPA no one under 13 can make an online account for anything, regardless of what it is. So it's definitely still illegal for Dropbox/Twitter/HN to have 12 year olds with accounts (without parent consent).
They might just want to be able to demonstrate to the FTC that they're confident there's no children with accounts, instead of just telling the FTC "it's well known children don't really use cloud storage services anyway so we never bothered to ask for age".
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
#36I've been seeing age checks like this more and more. Recently the FTC came down hard[0] on Kurbo (aka Weight Watchers) for not doing enough/anything to stop children under 13 (COPPA) from making accounts. Since they're not confident there's no children with accounts, now all Kurbo's data is tainted and they have to delete all user data and destroy any "algorithms" derived from that data. Historically Dropbox probably…
OK but if you read the link you included WW specifically MADE an app for children and collected the data: "the agency... marketed a weight loss app for use by children as young as eight and then collected their personal information without parental permission." That is pretty wilful -- so we can be confident they have or had data targeted from children. Dropbox on the other hand -- I'm not sure how that case is simil…
If you read the link at the link, they specifically call out maintaining accounts of kids who revised their birthdate below the limit, and for encouraging kids to lie by stating they had to be at least 13.
> Are children now allowed to use cloud backup services? Why wouldn't they?
It's basically a service for storing personal information, so probably not without parental consent.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
#37Not only is this a potential way to mess up your own account, but these systems are often exploited by malicious attackers to cause people headaches or impact their finances. For example, an attacker will call up PayPal and give their name as the real name of a famous online personality. They will tell the support rep "Hey sorry, I signed up for this account but I'm only 12. Can you turn off my account?". The rep wil…
use compromised credentials just to force the company to do the dirty work!
chaotic something
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
What should be the lowest valid date of birth? Is there some universal standard? I know it feels like 4 months is quite young, but where would you draw the line?
At least in the US, I don't believe you're supposed to use the internet unless you're 13 or older. You could start there for your dropdown.
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Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
#39Interesting that not but a week or two ago there was a post on HN stating that dropbox had the best programmers in the industry.
lol the interviewing.io guy that drank their own koolaid!
I think most people that commented in that thread were able to spot the cyanide dissolving into the drink
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least in the US, I don't believe you're supposed to use the internet unless you're 13 or older. You could start there for your dropdown.
Er, no. There is an actual privacy law with teeth if you're under 13 ("COPPA"). Companies don't want to be subject to any such regulation, so they choose to prohibit anyone under 13 from using their services. It's widely assumed that people under 13 simply work around these prohibitions by lying about their age, but as long as the companies don't have specific knowledge of this then legally everything is fine. Making…
Thank you! Thank god there's someone who knows why features like this are being implemented. You can't just say you're compliant by adding a button that says "I'm above the age of 13." Dropbox has to include ages younger than 13 in their dropdown selection.