Dropbox Passwords | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox Passwords

dropbox.com

38 pointsZaheer40 comments

After having individual files deleted repeatedly from Dropbox, I am not going anywhere near them again. Penetration testing is part of my job, and any PDFs related to that, keep being deleted. Why are they moderating my content? Never again.

I also stopped using OneDrive when I discovered it automatically categorised uploaded files based on their content, including pictures. Aside from the creep factor and this making obvious that they have full access of everything, it also was not particularly accurate as expected from yet another AI system.

You should expect any big cloud backups provider to have full access to your files, don't expect Google, Dropbox or Yandex to be any different than OneDrive. Use something like rclone[1] to upload encrypted backups.

[1] https://rclone.org/

Do you happen to have any source for this? I try to find information on Dropbox removing individual files, even supposedly "illegal" files, from one's account but can't find confirmation so far.

Indeed. From my communication with Dropbox support:

—-

Katie, Feb 5, 8:56 AM PST: Hi Alexander,

Thank you for contacting Dropbox. My name is Katie, and I will be helping you today.

It appears that your links are disabled because you may be hosting malware from your account and this is against the terms of service.

Can you please remove all malware from your account or your account will be disabled. Any further violations of the terms of service will result in the immediate deletion of your account with no warning.

The file that needs to be removed from your Dropbox is: old-stuff.rar

Once this has been addressed I would be happy to assist you further!

Thank you.

Regards, Katie The Dropbox Team

Dropbox does read and analyses my files.

Try syncthing

I've been using it for years to sync files between all my devices

https://syncthing.net/

I have setup a syncthing to dump data from my devices onto a staging server which nightly backups everything onto Wasabi using encrypted target with an rclone though any targets that rclone supports would work.

The only thing that I have not figured out how to backup is photos from wife's iphone. I guess I'm going to bite the bullet, buy a mac and do her phone to her icloud, from her icloud to a mac and from that mac to synthing to the staging server.

I have also brought up an edge server that acts as an on the fly decryption proxy to a different Wasabi bucket where I drop files I want to share.

There are third party commercial apps for importing data from/to iPhone for Windows and Mac (iMazing is one of those). If you don’t prefer that, you can also avoid iCloud storage as a go between by getting photos directly from the iPhone to the Mac by using a cable to connect them and importing photos using Image Capture or Photos.

I kind of want it to "just work" with no work on iPhone user's side

That’s really annoying. I have some windows crack tools for exploit testing that I can’t store on Dropbox unless I encrypt the file before Dropbox.

I don’t want this feature in my cloud storage. Especially since some of this stuff is long term storage for my NAS. I’d hate to try a restore after 10 years to find something flagged and deleted.

I could understand them if I was sharing links or something but I just keep them as personal backups.

Their unreliability is why I can’t use them as a paid service.

try https://www.lucidlink.com, works like a charm and you are in control of your files.

> Why are they moderating my content?

Because they don't want to be hosting malware and child porn. There are certainly false positives and your use case is such that it makes sense to go somewhere else. But you have to admit that your use case is fairly niche.

Another also-ran password manager - stick to one thing and do it well Dropbox. Anything else is just a noisy distraction.

While I may not exactly buy Dropbox plus, I think they're on an unfortunate treadmill competing with Google and MS and have to keep offering extra perks to justify the AUD 19 something per month cost so don't be surprised to find more features into Dropbox. I doubt they can just stick to one thing and do it well :(

Nah, they need to pivot. There is no long term competitive advantage over OneDrive or Google Drive if they just focus on their existing product. Both Microsoft and Google can both probably can have a long term competitive advantage in this space because of Android / Windows / 365 / Azure and GCP.

It's a nice addition but the Dropbox pricing is a bit out of touch IMHO. I mean look at Office365 and you get so much more for a comparable price, or?

Exactly. The entry-level tier is far too much to entice users in. They need to introduce a $5/month tier with 100-250GB to get people on board. I’d sign up in a heartbeat at that price point, but I can’t justify $20+ a month for some cloud storage with sync.

I know they’re primarily targeting business users with their features and pricing structure, but it doesn’t mean they should alienate the general user base - one day, someone from that user base will be the one signing the business deals, and they’ll go with what they’ve previously used and trust.

This is some bullshit right here.Most of us spend $10 a day on crap.Why is paying for software that is useful so "I cant justify it?".

We need to realize that paying for software is something we have to do otherwise we will end up being the products.

Not OP. Part of the reason I don't feel like spending $10 for this particular software (I pay for quite a bit of software every month FWIW) is the infinite variety that exists in the digital world : I could pay for OneDrive separately and 1Password separately and still have a few bucks left over. Or I could host something on S3 and use BitWarden for passwords .. you get the drift. The bigger point is that unlike the physical world where I am more or less limited by geography and time to buy "crap", I can pick and choose what I want to pay for. In this particular case, I think the AUD 19 for Dropbox (Plus or whatever it is called) is way too steep for the use it provides.

We IT workers are one of the most privileged people on planet earth.We earn a lot of money and can work from anywhere and yet we have decided to be manipulated by the Big Corporations to do the wrong thing.

Behind every open source project is a qualified individual that is doing something else and is paid well.Instead of working on what matters to him and earning a livable wage he has to slave away for some shitty corporation that pays him to write meaningless software.

We, the most privileged people have decided to vote with our wallets and we voted wrong.

I dont say you have to pay for it no matter what.If you dont need it you dont pay for it but pretending the "price is too steep and you cant afford it" is just lying to yourself and to us.

Are we still talking about Dropbox? What has that got to do with opensource?

I think he's talking about Bitwarden beeing names as an alternative to Dropbox Passwords.

Exactly. I use KeePass for password management, and Dropbox for conveniently syncing a set of common files across my devices. It’s a convenience, but not a necessity. That’s worth something to me, but it’s not $20 a month of value. It’s more like $3-10, depending on volume of content. For more than $10 per month I would rather buy some hard drives and host it myself from home with nextcloud or similar. I have plenty fast enough internet for the task, so it’s simply a question of value.

I don’t have a problem paying (and I do pay for plenty of services), but I need to be receiving value in return.

Imagine two arbitrary craps. Each costing $10. One includes unlimited use of Microsoft Office programs across all your computers and phones.

Now imagine the one with office costs only $8.

It’s not paying for software (although this is a service not software) it’s critically thinking about prices and comparing costs.

Wasn't Dropbox planned to be part of the NSA's PRISM program back in 2013?

I know this is my bias showing, but with Condoleezza Rice as a member of the board I assume strict collaboration with the NSA a given.

That was the whole reason Dropbox became 'persona non grata' in my world.

$120/yr for the cheapest. I think I'll stick with $0 for Bitwarden.

It's 120$ for 2TB of cloud storage which now happens to have password management. Bitwarden is a password manager with 1GB(?) of storage, so it's not a comparable offering.

How much do you really need for password management though? The occasional PDF with single-use 2FA keys is all I use the storage for.

I use KeePass and Syncthing. $0 a year and and you don't need to store your password db on someone else's sever.

https://syncthing.net/

I use password safe as a password manager. https://www.schneier.com/academic/passsafe/#:~:text=With%20P....

I keep the file synced to all my devices with drop box. I do worry that I have a horrible single point of failure. But at least I know to read the file you need to know my pretty long password.

What would be the failure here? File getting deleted and cannot be recovered eh?

I guess a keylogger getting my password for the password manager.

I was a little confused as to whether or not this was new because there's no date on the page. Looks like a beta happened in 2020?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/06/05/dropbox...

yeah no. Dropbox has a good history of peaking, sharing and other things.

This link summarises most of the major criticism of Dropbox: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Dropbox

There's enough there to not trust Dropbox with my data.

https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/dropbox-security-bug-made-...

Remember this one?

Thanks, but no thanks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com