Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#51

Post by willcipriano » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

xjay wrote: post #17

alpaca128 wrote: post #2

> Obviously this is my mistake No, it isn't. 2022 should not be a valid date of birth in the first place. And the account being locked because of that should probably also not happen without additional checks. It's okay to have standards even when most UIs are bad.

Coder sees "We need feature X". Coder implements feature X, marks it as complete; next. So they have the coder (implementer) role covered, but not the "programmer" role ("thinker"/feature designer). Leslie Lamport - Thinking Above the Code: ~ A lot of people like to think that they're thinking, but they don't really do much thinking. [1] Evidently, there was no expectation that the coder/implementer was supposed to d…

This got past the undoubtedly upwards of nine product managers/business analysts/directors/etc on the team as well. Blaming the low man on that totem pole in a organization thick with management like that is silly.

None of the "idea men" had the idea of "what if someone's cat walks across the keyboard when we ask them their birthday". That's the embarrassing failure here.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#52

Post by spicybright » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:43 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #26

henning wrote: post #6

rsync + 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.

I use syncthing to sync my entire phone. Now I have a 64GB folder on my desktop that /is/ my phone, but all normal local files I can treat like any other file.

Taking a picture with my phone and having it show up on my computer in 5 seconds is pretty close to magic in terms of file sharing.

Completely free, andno central server to introduce "age verification" or whatever.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#53

Post by kingcharles » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #33

kingcharles wrote: post #25

I 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/mon…

Yowch. I didn't realize the price difference was so substantial. I have GDrive and OneDrive accounts too. OneDrive's Windows integration works great. I'm just trying to get away from Google and Microsoft tie-downs because I don't trust their ability to give me support if I got locked out of my account for some reason.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#54

Post by lancesells » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #5

reset-password wrote: post #3

I'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.

Same here. I imagine someone at the company in some meeting: "We've even got a couple users who are in their 90s!"

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#55

Post by xeromal » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

roywashere wrote: post #44

xeromal wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

My kid made a presentation for his class using Google Docs, then filled in his day of birth on his new phone when setting it up, then got locked out of his account. He was 12 at the time. Also, his class had a WhatsApp group chat in which school info was shared. This was kind of weird because it meant that all 12 year olds in the group must have cheated their dates of birth, because otherwise they could not have had…

Cheating on your DOB is a rite of passage on the internet. I did it in the 90s. I think my old hotmail account still has my mom's bday in it

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#56

Post by thefifthsetpin » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

I did the same thing the other day setting up an iphone. I went back to fix my birthdate, but it prevented me for a while, telling me that my real birthdate was "invalid" or some such, and that I should try again later.

Eventually, enough time passed that my birthdate became valid and I was able to proceed. It was annoying, but honestly it was probably less annoying than coding that onboarding screen must have been.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#57

Post by leach » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

That's insane haha

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#58

Post by Arrath » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

xeromal wrote: post #55

roywashere wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kid made a presentation for his class using Google Docs, then filled in his day of birth on his new phone when setting it up, then got locked out of his account. He was 12 at the time. Also, his class had a WhatsApp group chat in which school info was shared. This was kind of weird because it meant that all 12 year olds in the group must have cheated their dates of birth, because otherwise they could not have had…

Cheating on your DOB is a rite of passage on the internet. I did it in the 90s. I think my old hotmail account still has my mom's bday in it

Why yes I was born on the 20th of April, way back in 1969, why do you ask?

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#59

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

tpxl wrote: post #15

dragonwriter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The age verification feature is for COPPA compliance, but I’d really like to see the provision that prevents correcting errors.

They will correct errors, after you give them a bunch of document scans or a credit card. I wasn't willing to provide that to a random foreign company for a free service, I just moved to Discord.

Yes, I get that procedurally firms make it harder to correct information than to initially enter it. I just want to see the justification that the law in question actually requires that.

Re: Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

#60

Post by taylorhughes » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 6:07 PM UTC

Note that this is due to legal requirements around discovering a user's age in a "neutral" way, in order to block under-13 users (or varying other ages depending on global jurisdiction). This is called a "neutral age screen". The screen cannot indicate that there will be a lockout, or underage users would just say they were older to get around it. It sucks, but most apps of a certain size and liability profile have to implement it this way.