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Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled
- mapcars 3y agoDropbox is still alive? wow
- mrjin 3y agoWow, uninstall dropbox then.
- mrobins 3y agoWhat are good Dropbox alternatives for teams?
- chrisyeah 3y agoThe discussion is from 2020/2021. That would have been good to mention in the title on HN.
- doersino 3y agoI’ve been using https://github.com/samschott/maestral https://github.com/samschott/maestral instead of Dropbox’s client for the last year or so and it’s been rock-solid.
- thijsvandien 3y agoWorks very well indeed. The only thing I miss is the ability to easily create public links from the GUI. TIL it is possible from the command line, so perhaps I can make it work with Automator.
- zeruch 3y agoThis looks quite cool.
- api 3y agoAnything like this for Google Drive? That client also used to be good but has become complete bloated trash in recent years. It seems like all chat, conference, and collaboration software must devolve into bloated slow buggy trash over time.
- password4321 3y agohttps://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/ is only like maestral if you squint hard enough, but it does support Google Drive (and Dropbox).
- nullrouted 3y agohttps://www.insynchq.com/ https://www.insynchq.com/
- Razengan 3y agoRemember their dirty tricks in the past? How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac (1037 points on Sept 9, 2016, 423 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338 Revealing Dropbox’s dirty little security hack: https://applehelpwriter.com/2016/07/28/revealing-dropboxs-dirty-little-security-hack/ https://applehelpwriter.com/2016/07/28/revealing-dropboxs-di... Dropbox Lied to Users About Data Security: https://www.wired.com/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/ https://www.wired.com/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/
- CJefferson 3y agoI'll be honest, I don't really see the complaint here. The telemetry goes to telemetry.dropbox.com. You get this telemetry because you have installed the Dropbox desktop app, which means Dropbox already has lots of access to your machine. If this telemetry just went back mixed with normal Dropbox communications (like most apps), would people even be aware of it? There doesn't seem to be any discussion of what the telemetry actually is, just annoyance it exists.
- WhyNotHugo 3y ago> I'll be honest, I don't really see the complaint here. There is no explicit consent.
- CJefferson 3y agoBut dropbox already has huge amounts of information about you, in particular the names, contents, and history of all of your files.
- zorked 3y agoThey have consent for that. It's not hard. Also consent to store does not imply consent to read, process, make use of.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoI keep searching xkcd, but all my efforts are frustrated, and this is as close as I get: https://xkcd.com/908/ https://xkcd.com/908/ I distinctly recall a webcomic in the past few years lampooning cloud storage. There was a guy who said "hey, there's this guy down the street who lets me keep stuff on shelves in his garage." "What does he charge you?" "Nothing, he says it's just cool if I keep it there." and then the stuff is sold off or tampered with, the guy is irate, and the moral of the story is essentially "why did you trust a random guy with a garage to keep your stuff?"
- 3y ago
- Pawka 3y agoIs this still a case? The first comment in thread is from 2020, the last - from 2021. Now where I live is 2023. I don't have any relationship with Dropbox, but we should be precise that this information might be outdated.
- Syssiphus 3y agoI checked my pi-hole query log and couldn't find any reference to the named telemetry address.
- hybridtupel 3y agoI can imagine they “fixed” it by just sending the telemetry now to the TLD so nobody complains any longer.
- Hamuko 3y agoDo people still use Dropbox? I feel like I almost never hear recommendations for it. I personally abandoned Dropbox when they introduced a limit on the amount of devices you could use for free plans, and the cheapest plan was like 120€/year for 2 TB.
- michael9k 3y agoMaybe I just have a different view of pricing, but I find €120 a year for 2TB with unlimited versions, ability to share files of any size, rock solid syncing on all my devices etc to be extremely cheap!
- ketzu 3y agoOh they increased to 2TB? (Seems it was around 2019... wow I am not up to date! https://venturebeat.com/business/dropbox-increases-plus-plan-to-2tb-for-12-per-month-adds-rewind-smart-sync/ https://venturebeat.com/business/dropbox-increases-plus-plan... ) Back when I decided which cloud storage to use, all the big ones were at 1TB and dorpbox was the most expensive with the least features, while microsofts offer included office 365 for nearly half the price. Right now it seems: MS 6$/mo for 1TB + Office (https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/microsoft-365/onedrive/compare-onedrive-plans?activetab=tab%3Aprimaryr1&market=af https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/microsoft-365/onedrive/compa...) Dropbox 10$/mo for 2TB (https://www.dropbox.com/plans https://www.dropbox.com/plans) Google 12$/mo for 2TB+some smaller things like calls (https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html?utm_source=driveforwork&utm_medium=et&utm_content=seemoreplans&utm_campaign=pricing&hl=en https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html?utm_source=drivefo...) There obviously are smaller companies offering storage too, which seems to be around 4~5$/(mo and TB), eg https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storage-pricing-plans.html?period=year https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storage-pricing-plans.html?peri... https://icedrive.net/plans https://icedrive.net/plans https://www.sync.com/pricing-individual/ https://www.sync.com/pricing-individual/ Overall I'd say its not a terrible offer after the increase to 2TB, but on the expensive side compared to competitors.
- vvillena 3y agoThe 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.
- aunty_helen 3y agoWouldn't get this with a FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
- mikae1 3y agoOr use an open source client without telemetry such as https://maestral.app https://maestral.app ㋡
- dspillett 3y ago“On other platforms, you can install the Python package or a Docker image based on Alpine Linux” isn't going to fly for a lot of users, though maybe there is quite an overlap between people who know the details of why they might want to install it and people with the ability to.
- notpushkin 3y agoOther platforms being Windows? :^) That's a valid point though, I hope somebody contributes a Windows GUI at some point.
- hoistbypetard 3y agoIf you're using Windows at this point, you must have decided that this sort of telemetry is acceptable for you. It's about the same level as the stuff you can't disable in current versions of that OS.
- japanuspus 3y agoThis. Recently came back to macOS after a decade on the other side, and one surprise was how terrible the official Dropbox client was. Installed Maestral instead and it just works -- just like Dropbox used to. <begin rant>I see Dropbox as one of the biggest failures of the VC model. If only they had been bootstrapped, they would probably have stuck with their initial sync offering: A perfectly executed solution to a problem everybody has. And a small team could have made a good living here -- even with reasonably priced non-free options. Instead I imagine some VC partner convinced them to "grow their market" (or maybe "prepare for cloud"), and now they are descending into irrelevance. <end rant>
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoMany times on HN, commenters have mocked those who questioned why someone would use Dropbox instead of a method controlled by the user. I guess becausse someone made lots of money from it or it became popular or something. I always found this perplexing because I look at solutions from the perspective of the user, namely, me, not from the perspective of a third party "tech" startup founder. It's insensitive to the people on HN who want to other tried and true solutions. "Other people are using Dropbox, so you should too." Who cares. Every user is different. If someone wants to use something else besides Dropbox, why harass them. I could care less what "99%" of users are doing. I care about what I'm doing. I confess I have never used it. I still rely on USB sticks for a variety of tasks, more than simply transferring files. Anyway, for me, this telemetry nonsense would be one reason I would avoid Dropbox. Maybe there will someday be telemetry in USB sticks. We'll see. Meanwhile...
- latexr 3y ago> I guess becausse someone made lots of money from it or it became popular or something. No, it’s because it was useful and simple in a way that non-techies could and would set up and use. That’s why Dropbox got popular.
- nottorp 3y agoEven as a techie, why would you put in the work to set up your own thing? Though, I moved away from Dropbox long ago when they introduced device limits. One phone, one laptop and one triple booting desktop -> over the device limit already.
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agoPutting in the work to setup your own thing is great. You learn a lot, if your doing it at an advanced level you start to understand some of the designs/tradeoffs that the commercial products made. Keeping that running and reliable and operating it for years or decades sounds like an absolute nightmare and I'd suggest avoiding that at all costs.
- thoma4s 3y agoIf something is free, you're the product. But yeah this is bad
- conjuredbytes 3y agoDropbox isn’t free
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoIt just costs you all your data!
- fongol 3y agoAny analysis on what is being sent to their telemetry service? Doesn't seem to be in that thread. I don't see why people are getting so irked about this, without knowing any details of what data Dropbox is receiving.
- smittywerben 3y agoI stopped using dropbox after finding it quarantines files. You won't know about this until you try to migrate off Dropbox. It just gives me the creeps now.
- willis936 3y agoI stopped when I stopped being comfortable with them looking at my data. My sensibilities changed and software options had advanced to the point that the activation energy of switching to an E2EE solution had been surpassed. I use self-hosted nextcloud + wireguard + B2 encrypted backup. It's not perfect, it's more setup on each device (no longer a single auth away from the data), but it's well worth it to me. There's a market here. Idk how big. Apple seems to think there's a market here too. If they offered larger sizes I might be tempted to go all in on Apple.
- mtmail 3y agoFor me it was watching my desktop folder. If I created a screenshot there would suddenly be a notification window asking me if I wanted to upload/share it via Dropbox. Contacted their support, you couldn't switch it off and they didn't understand why such notifications would annoy a user.
- suddenclarity 3y agoWhat does this mean in this context? I tried searching but couldn't find anything other than antivirus software sometimes quarantined files in their Dropbox folder which isn't really a Dropbox issue. Are Dropbox deleting files without notification?
- mikae1 3y agoUse an open source Dropbox client such as https://maestral.app https://maestral.app
- InCityDreams 3y ago...not for windows, though.
- popey 3y agoI switched away from Dropbox to Syncthing https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ a few years ago. Running it on Windows, Mac and Linux (I don't use it on mobile) to keep all manner of files in sync across a bunch of machines. While it doesn't have all the shell integration and end-user friendliness of Dropbox, it also doesn't have the pitfalls like (non-optional) telemetry and constant up-sell.
- Pawka 3y agoI did the same. Plus also I'm using on my Android phone. Replaces Dropbox completely unless I want to share something with other people. But for that case I usually use Sharing feature from Synology NAS.
- popey 3y agoOh I also have shared folders with other people. We used to use it for sharing audio files between podcast presenters, which worked well enough. I have half a dozen folders in my $HOME, shared with different groups of people. I also have Syncthing installed on my home server which gets backed up. So I have a copy of all my files backed up there, in the event a laptop goes missing or dies. The only use case I haven't yet covered is an off-site backup of my Syncthing folder, which would be sensible. I just don't know who I can trust with it.
- bayindirh 3y agoYou can install a cron job which compresses, encrypts and rsyncs/rclones your home backup weekly to somewhere. Or you can use BackInTime which can automatically encrypt and only backup changed files, again to a remote location.
- devsda 3y agoA word of caution for anyone planning to use syncthing for backups. Syncthing is designed as a sync solution but not explicitly for backups. You need some extra setup on top of the defaults for building a reliable backup solution. If not setup correctly, any "mistakes" from one of the devices will automatically be synced to other devices and cannot be retrieved back. In the case of a lost/stolen device, make sure you remove the device as soon as possible. If not a bad actor now possessing the device can delete and sync that back to your "back-up" devices too.
- jiri 3y agoOne can install and use nextcloud. You get similar client and similar experience. You need to care about your data and server though.
- brettermeier 3y agoTaking care of data and servers is the big problem, even for people who are more into computers. There are many holes to fall into.
- jraph 3y agoThere are Nextcloud providers :-) Here's a list in French: https://wiki.chatons.org/doku.php/services/nextcloud https://wiki.chatons.org/doku.php/services/nextcloud BTW I'm learning from it that /e/ [1] partners with Murena [2] which offers accounts with 1 GB of free storage. Apparently, Murena is French. [1] https://murena.io/ https://murena.io/ [2] https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/
- adrr 3y agoAlso some of us here work at public companies and these systems are under scope since finance needs away to share/edit financial documents with each other. These big firms have soc1s. Running our own infra would put that infra under scope which is a huge burden.
- redder23 3y agoDon't use any if these proprietary shit apps in the first place. I find it silly to complain about things like that. Even if they have opt-out or even opt-in. They will eventually change it, they will abuse you. They will have "bugs" that leak data. You can only trust open source. And there are plenty of alternatives, that you can self host.
- alkonaut 3y agoI don’t want to self host. I don’t even want to self-setup some cloud blob store to which my open source can sync. I want something that is free as in beer and zero setup for myself. Happy to take suggestions but Dropbox does seem to fit.
- eviks 3y agoCan you list top-3 fully-featured Dropbox alternatives of the plenty?
- alkonaut 3y agoI get that for some classes of "local-only" apps like compilers (famous from a recent discussion on the same topic), network communication can be surprising and therefore feel unnecessary. But for an app whose sole purpose is sending and receiving lots of sensitive private data to Dropbox servers, who has the energy to be outraged that there is also some other anonymous data sent such as program crash info? I mean Dropbox has the contents of my files should I find it creepy or unnecessary that they know my RAM amount or what the last exception was?
- MereInterest 3y agoFor any local program, I can block its access to the network and still use it. For a program whose functionality requires internet access, I can either inspect every outgoing packet for exfiltrated data, or I can choose to trust some programs to be non-malicious based on their reputation. That trust is incredibly fragile, and unannounced spying/telemetry breaks it.
- hunter2_ 3y agoI am on the fence as to whether I agree with you, but I'll embellish a certain aspect: these folks keep citing how the number of DNS lookups (what pihole reports/blocks) is extraordinary, exceeding all other vendors they use, which says pretty much nothing about the nature of the payload other than that Dropbox likely has very granular client uptime data. The client could cache the DNS response instead of doing so many lookups, and some amount of rage would disappear.
- kokanee 3y agoI'm wondering where the line is between acceptable and unacceptable logs. Obviously no one appreciates analytics used by marketing teams, but virtually every internet service has logs used by engineers (which seem to be what this post is about). A few factors that seem relevant: - Is the service running locally? - Do we trust/expect that the data is not used for marketing (i.e. would the user have complained if the domain was "error-reporting.dropbox.com")? - Is the data anonymous (think twice, everyone who has IPs or user IDs in request logs) - Did we agree to relevant ToS or privacy policies? If we think carefully about this, I'd bet that most people here have used or even implemented some form of logging that has privacy problems.
- trollied 3y agoStopped using Dropbox a long time ago. Their constant "marketing" emails were bordering on scammy "Your dropbox is almost full!" etc - I try not to deal with companies that play these games.
- lightedman 3y agoThat's exactly why I quit using Dropbox. I have TWO pictures in my Dropbox, no way in hell it's almost full. You lie to me in your advertising, you don't get my money, period.
- SheinhardtWigCo 3y agoThe other day I noticed that the Dropbox icon had a red notification dot. Uh oh, maybe I'm running out of space. Nope, it was an ad for using Dropbox to scan my tax documents or some shit like that. I contacted support to ask about disabling future fake notifications, and they tried to claim that malware could be responsible. I suppose in a way, they're not wrong...
- philip1209 3y agoI finally got off of Dropbox recently in favor of the iCloud with "Advanced Data Protection", i.e. end-to-end encryption. People tend to think that "Tech Independence" [1] and "The Cloud" are at odds with each other. But, end-to-end encrypted services that sync via the cloud really are the best of both worlds - convenient and secure. [1] https://sive.rs/ti https://sive.rs/ti
- rmm 3y agoWe use Dropbox business, anyone recommend a good replacement. Main features I want is version history and easy recovery.
- qwerty456127 3y agoFuck all telemetry (sharing any information which is not just "you have no control over" but anything which is not logically necessary for the app to do its primary job). Just don't use any apps you can block from doing this. IMHO this (sending redundant and untransparent information from a user's machine) should be outlawed.
- Xeamek 3y agoError reporting is far from being redundant though, it's literally 1 step away from being 'logically necessary'
- Valodim 3y agoThis. It's hard to take app development that doesn't use any kind of crash reporting seriously, tbqh. Like, there's a crash reported by a user. That's already rare in itself, and average report quality from non technical users varies from nearly useless to misleading. What are you gonna do, ask them where it happened and what they were doing, to guess where in your related code something went wrong?
- qwerty456127 3y agoI would gladly report all the bugs myself manually, with all the details, specifics and reproduction steps. The only problem is 85% of bugs I ever reported either got "won't fix" status (mostly in free software) or just been silently forgotten (mostly at work) or got a "pay first, then ask for fixes" response (when it was about shareware). So I lost enthusiasm. Free software bug reporting also often has a problem of requiring registration in a separate BugZilla for every project but this problem has mostly been resolved by the majority moving to GitHub. By the way, although I don't want to participate in involuntary and non-transparent automatic error reporting, I find your response logically beautiful. "One step away" - a perfect and reasonable description for this.
- Xeamek 3y agoYou wouldn't though. Because a lot of different crashes (not to mention warnings) are handled automatically and are restarted before you even notice. If you have android, just connect it to pc, open logcat and filter for errors only. There are still messages every couple seccond. You would get frustrated even if those were simply showed to You as a user, not to mention actively going out of your way to report them
- aborsy 3y agoI usually share telemetry with open source software that I am happy with. Log reports, crashes, usage, etc, in Linux and so on. It’s a good way to give back, and improve software that is often free. It’s presumably anonymized and safe. I don’t think we should be adversarial.
- jmartrican 3y agoDropbox seems to use up a lot of resources on my laptop. I keep it turned off until I need to suck down or upload some recent files. I turn it right off again after using it.
- vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago[dead]
- haswell 3y agoI was a very early user of Dropbox but I’ve fallen out of love with the product over the years, and while I still have an account, I’ve avoided installing the clients for awhile now. I’ve been migrating things over to Synology Drive hosted in my closet, and the UX for this is a lot like Dropbox (in a good way). Combined with Tailscale, I get all of the convenience without the ick, and a hell of a lot more storage for that matter.
- jimnotgym 3y agoAgain self-regulation is not working
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- otikik 3y agoIt can be disabled with an uninstall.
- landmass 3y agoMy limited syncing requirements are met with Signal. Put something into "Notes to Self" and it then exists anywhere I have Signal, which is on everything.
- xpil 3y agoI actually enjoy Dropbox - for a flat fee of ~€10/month I get 2TB of cloud space plus the synchronization across unlimited devices. I don't mind the telemetry thing, at least not too much. However, their approach to Android is absolutely ridiculous. There is no files or folders synchronization - at least not at the OS level, like in Windows or Linux. If I need to access my Dropbox files on an Android device, the only way is to do it via the Dropbox app, and it is clunky. The biggest pain point is that I cannot use 3rd party apps to open a folder in my Dropbox storage - I can open a single file, fine, but for example Obsidian is out of reach as it requires opening an entire folder, which is currently not possible. (I can create an offline copy of the folder on the device and open that one but it defies the purpose of having a sophisticated synchronization software). So I think at some point I will start investigating alternatives.
- snvzz 3y agoYou know what else has telemetry that cannot be disabled? Microsoft Windows. It is about time something is done about it.
- fuzzehchat 3y agorsync.net seem to be spaffing a lot on advertising, anyine ot any experience of them ? 1TB bonus if you sign up, but haow good is their product?
- green-salt 3y agoI really want to try their ZFS Send offering but minimum buy in at 4TB for $60 a month isn't worth it yet to me.
- huggingmouth 3y agoSynching telemetry can be disabled. In fact, it's disabled by default.
- nielsbot 3y agoCan it? The article says disabling telemetry had no effect. Maybe this has changed.
- pritambaral 3y agoYour parent is talking about Syncthing, an open-source P2P alternative, not Dropbox.
- butz 3y agoAlright, I've cleared some time on the weekend, time to switch to some alternative. I don't need much space, a few GBs are enough. What's the best paid option for Linux?
- southernplaces7 3y agoWhy anyone would use a data storage and backup platform that openly does this and many other things for their most intimate personal or most private business data is utterly beyond me. There are many, many zero-knowledge solutions out there, and ones that at least don't openly spy on user data.