*"We’re honored to have Dr. Rice join our board — "
This is their problem, not privacy concerns. How can they be “honored” to have her on their board?
I’m now actually more certain to stop using dropbox after this than if they just kept silent.
Thats fine by me.
I was thinking of getting more space last week but I decided to wait. I’m glad I did and I am happy that dropbox have saved me £60 a year. I know they won’t miss the money but I appreciate having it.
I deleted my account yesterday. Reading the Dropbox announcement today simply reinforced the view that I’d done the right thing. The company’s statement that “she brings an incredible amount of experience and insight into international markets and the dynamics that define them” is so poorly expressed as to be almost laughable. That they are serious should be a concern for any investor.
Doubling down, I see. It’s a great way to let everyone know you didn’t do something stupid by accident.
My phone came with free X GB Dropbox which I never got around to using, mostly because I don’t really go for putting my personal stuff in the cloud (looks like I was right on that, take that NSA*) but yeah. I think now it’s probably time to dig out Titanium and remove it entirely.
After the Mozilla stuff last week, you think companies might think about this kind of stuff…
*and yes, the NSA probably has all my data from a hundred other sources, but symbolic victories are better than nothing…probably.
I’ve just dropped DropBox and told them so in the comment section under that post.
Time to use my Synology NAS for more than just a network drive, backup and media server.
I dropped them last night and uninstalled their app from all my devices. I still have plenty of free space on other systems, such as Google Drive.
From the Dropbox blog post: “There’s nothing more important to us than keeping your stuff safe and secure.”
ORLY? Nothing? Would Mr. Houston resign his position as CEO rather than violate the security (from government surveillance) of his users’ files? Would he and the board allow the company to fold, would they go to jail, rather than accede to the demands of a National Security letter? Nothing more important?
Of course, the great thing about his statement is that it’s so vaguely worded that it could mean anything or nothing. “Keeping your stuff safe and secure” could mean parking in your driveway to keep an eye on your house, or providing the government with a regular feed of encryption keys in the name of their idea of national security.
Hmmm. I dunno, people. Maybe not so hasty with the symbolics? Might be worth keeping an account going. Y’know, ready for the day when they pick you up for being uppity. “But I have a dropbox account …!”
So glad they just updated their iOS version yesterday - I’d forgotten I had it on my iPad. It’s been deleted now. Guess I need to see if I still have an account and close it out.
Bringing someone like Rice on board makes Dropbox’s free storage deal look surprisingly sinister.
It’s like Col. Sanders being on the board of PETA.
I wonder if Dropbox will end up being the high-profile poster-child casualty of the War on Terror.
Just Google “Dropsmack”…that entire system is so riddled with virus and malware issues it’s a joke. They are just after an IPO launch, nothing more.
any current recommendations on alternatives? A lot of the dropbox defectors are going to google drive, but that’s problematic for many reasons also.
Hello,
I have never been of Internet storage services. A friend of mine was a sysadmin at one during the late 90s/early 00s and used to regale me with tales of how their claim of servers in data centers was, in fact, an aging Sun box which was never backed up and when it crashed every few months, all customers’ data went with it.
These days, I do not think it matter what cloud storage provider you use. It seems that even if you do open up to FISA court mandated taps, the NSA is still going to intercept your comms via your network providers.
Sometimes I cynically wonder if the reason we don’t have faster broadband speeds in America is because of technological limitations on how much that can be monitored. Popularizing cloud technologies is one way that could help ensure that instead of having access to data only during transit that it’s available when at rest as well.
I know they won’t even care (I only use the free service). But I’m gone. Right now I’m moving everything to box.net.
These days, I do not think it matter what cloud storage provider you use. It seems that even if you do open up to FISA court mandated taps, the NSA is still going to intercept your comms via your network providers.
What do you think of a provider like SpiderOak? My understanding of their system is that everything is encrypted on the client side before being transmitted and stored on the server.
