Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#71

Post by _e » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

plg wrote: post #22

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ... so what are my alternatives if I literally only want: - a folder that syncs on my devices - the ability to share a folder with others - cross-platform

rsync - https://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync

I am having trouble finding the original "Show HN" for Dropbox but I recall people just calling it, more or less, "rsync with a web GUI."

Taking it one step further, you could use rclone (https://rclone.org/) which is like rsync but adds the functionality of syncing files with different cloud storage providers.

It has been on my TODO list to setup rclone with Nuage as the front end (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/nuage) so I can have a Dropbox-like interface with org-mode text file rendering on the go.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#72

Post by josteink » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

thunderbong wrote: post #42

plg wrote: post #22

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ... so what are my alternatives if I literally only want: - a folder that syncs on my devices - the ability to share a folder with others - cross-platform

I'll also vouch for syncthing. It's the best file sharing application. It works cross platform, has windows, linux, android and mac clients. I can choose to share specific folders for each device. I have one set up on a DO droplet and seamlessly syncs across all my devices. Also, when two devices are on the same LAN, it discovers the devices automatically. Couldn't praise it enough! https://syncthing.net/

Biggest problem with syncthing is lack of iOS-support.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#73

Post by 52-6F-62 » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #67

52-6F-62 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I just tried the demo, but it's not working in Firefox 69.0 at all. It loads, but nothing works. https://imgur.com/a/w8cyFWf

Weird. Don’t have any issues like that in my setup, but I can see not having a working demo to judge a product by makes it hard to commit. Works for me, though, for what it’s worth.

No worries. I know my office blocks a lot of traffic and has some other rules baked in so I wonder if that’s the case here.

Thanks for the recommendation though.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#74

Post by 52-6F-62 » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

y4mi wrote: post #69

52-6F-62 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Keybase for file sync/backup—though not extensively. In spite of all of those other points, I've found the sync does work pretty seamlessly if you just need 1:1 sync and limited special features. That suits me well enough.

Definitely not 1:1 sync. They're not even saving metadata which is available on all filesystems such as timestamps etc.

Oh interesting. I guess I assumed too much. To be fair, my main interest was in the content so it served me fine but for more complex workflows or needs that would be debilitating.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#75

Post by sambe » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

It feels like there are more responsible ways to deal with this than showing up their support team on Twitter.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#76

Post by rahuldottech » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

_e wrote: post #71

plg wrote: post #22

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ... so what are my alternatives if I literally only want: - a folder that syncs on my devices - the ability to share a folder with others - cross-platform

rsync - https://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync I am having trouble finding the original "Show HN" for Dropbox but I recall people just calling it, more or less, "rsync with a web GUI." Taking it one step further, you could use rclone ( https://rclone.org/ ) which is like rsync but adds the functionality of syncing files with different cloud storage providers. It has been on my TODO list to setup rclone with Nuage as the f…

It doesn't have "Show HN" in the title, but here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#77

Post by tempsy » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #57

Not only that, but Dropbox lets you pick any publicly visible document that's been viewed by a large number of people and easily spam them simply by writing @doc. I may have just pissed off a lot of people with my experiment :( I realised immediately afterwards how reckless that was, but Dropbox - WTF? Why is this even allowed?

I think the first self-described "growth hacker" worked for Dropbox way back when. Would not be surprised that the toxic "growth hacking" ethos still permeates through their growth/product teams today.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#78

Post by staticassertion » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

plg wrote: post #22

Man alive, all I want is a folder that syncs. That's all. I understand that Dropbox is a business and blah blah blah ... so what are my alternatives if I literally only want: - a folder that syncs on my devices - the ability to share a folder with others - cross-platform

Paper is a separate product.

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#79

Post by ooooak » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #57

Not only that, but Dropbox lets you pick any publicly visible document that's been viewed by a large number of people and easily spam them simply by writing @doc. I may have just pissed off a lot of people with my experiment :( I realised immediately afterwards how reckless that was, but Dropbox - WTF? Why is this even allowed?

> I may have just pissed off a lot of people with my experiment :(

That's why we don't test on production

Re: Dropbox exposes personal details of viewers of publicly shared Paper documents

#80

Post by smush » Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #72

thunderbong wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll also vouch for syncthing. It's the best file sharing application. It works cross platform, has windows, linux, android and mac clients. I can choose to share specific folders for each device. I have one set up on a DO droplet and seamlessly syncs across all my devices. Also, when two devices are on the same LAN, it discovers the devices automatically. Couldn't praise it enough! https://syncthing.net/

Biggest problem with syncthing is lack of iOS-support.

I agree that is the most significant barrier. There are threads like [1], but like other much-wanted features like Syncthing being able to support untrusted nodes that hold the data, but don't have encryption keys a-la Resilio Sync, progress sometimes comes in spurts and starts.

[1] https://forum.syncthing.net/t/on-syncthing-ios-port-again/89...