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Dropbox has hidden third party AI settings, not disabled them
134 points by pmags on Dec 18, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 31 comments
You are probably aware of the Dropbox third party AI sharing kerfuffle discussed last week.

If you login to your Dropbox account today you will see that the AI sharing tab in account settings is no longer visible.

This morning, through my university's IT contacts with Dropbox, we learned that the AI settings have now been hidden but are NOT off by default.

This is highly concerning and suggests that Dropbox is trying to sweep this issue under the rug rather than address the real privacy concerns that their AI sharing raises.



I wanted to finally turn off that checkbox a few days ago and couldn't find it anywhere. The entire page it's supposed to be on didn't exist. I had no idea whether that meant I'm automatically opted in or out.

Thing is, if they use my dropbox content, it may be more a risk for them than for me; it's mostly PDFs I bought in webshops; stuff copyrighted by other people than me. My consent isn't that relevant; they need the consent of the actual copyright holders. And they don't have that.

This is the big problem with all these tech companies suddenly realise new ways to mine all that data that they happen to have access to. The data isn't theirs, and it's quite possibly not their users' either.


This is especially a concern for Google Drive, considering how pirates use it.

Until very recently, nearly all CSF (clean steam files; the uncompressed, cracked game files) archives shared on the biggest video game piracy forum were stored on Drive.


Jumping in to clarify some confusion. The AI third-party toggle is only visible to users who have access to our AI features. If you don’t see the AI third-party toggle, then you can’t view or use Dropbox AI features. To reiterate, neither this nor any other setting automatically or passively sends any Dropbox customer data to a third-party AI service. Please see our Help Center article for a list of those with access to Dropbox AI features: https://help.dropbox.com/view-edit/privacy-settings-dropbox-...


Can you explain why some users with personal Basic accounts (myself included) found the AI third-party toggle "On" when they checked last week?


FWIW, the "AI" tab indeed no longer appears on my EU-based "plus" account and the previous direct link to that settings tab (https://www.dropbox.com/account/ai) now redirects to /account/general.


The recent incident involving Dropbox's third-party AI sharing has sparked concerns within the user community. Despite the removal of the AI sharing tab from account settings, it has come to light that the AI settings remain active by default. This development raises significant privacy concerns, indicating that Dropbox might be attempting to downplay the issue rather than addressing the root problems associated with AI sharing.

This situation prompts a broader discussion on transparency, user consent, and data privacy in cloud services. Users are left questioning the adequacy of measures taken to safeguard their information and whether the platform is prioritizing user privacy appropriately. As the community voices its concerns, it underscores the importance of companies proactively addressing privacy issues and fostering trust through transparent communication and user-friendly privacy controls.


Friendly reminder that your company probably pays significant money to dropbox for something you dont use.

At my last company I proposed an audit of our cloud storage services. IT emailed everyone to close their corporate account if they absolutely didn't have to use Dropbox (or move files to personal account if they were storing personal files).

It turned out that most paid a accounts existed because someone had shared something with an employer who then used his corporate email to create a dropbox account. We ended up saving A LOT of money by closing those.


In most corporations, the only way to reliable send a large file to someone is to bypass the corporation's own systems. You gotta have Dropbox because IT disabled attachments in your Teams, your email scanning drops anything that does not smell like plain text and the USB ports on your PC have been filled with epoxy. Not even going to mention Onedrive and other Dropbox alternatives, because my experiences with those is uniformly terrible


Where I work, we don't use Dropbox. We do have OneDrive, but nobody actually uses it (because it's terrible). Instead, we all share files via shared drives on company servers.


My current client seems to be the opposite of that; dropbox is blocked, but I can share anything through Teams.


Our company just moved everyones desktop to a corporate dropbox. They also have sharepoints. The also just run servers for the actual project files.


Also a friendly reminder to close accounts for people who have left your company.


If everyone does this, does it trigger the next tech crunch?


Still there for me on my Team account: https://www.dropbox.com/team/admin/settings/ai but hidden on my personal account


I’m confused - how do we “un-hide” the setting to switch it off? I’m in the US, with a Dropbox Basic (Personal) plan, and I don’t have any AI settings available.


It was never offered for the basic plans.


Not true -- my personal account (free basic plan) had this tab/option and I was "opted in" by default. I managed to change this setting before the AI tab disappeared.


https://help.dropbox.com/view-edit/dropbox-ai-overview <- this page says the feature was only available on Dropbox Professional, Essentials, Business, Business Plus, and some customers on Dropbox Standard and Advanced. Basic free plans are listed. So while you may have had the toggle the actual feature, which is what you have to use to actually send data to OpenAI was not available therefore no data would be sent.


I'm completely out of the loop on the current state of Dropbox but from context clues I'm guessing it's been plowed under by enshittification?


Not actually. The setting is essentially "allow OpenAI to look at your files (we promise they won't use them for anything, pinky swear)"

It's only the part in parenthesis that disturbs people. If I told you that you can now search your drop box via open AI's integration, you wouldn't really care.

Oh, the other caveat is that the default position of the switch that allows the integration is on in America and off in Europe, likely because, you know, American's dont seem to give a shit how nakedly anti-privacy their tech companys _can potentially be_.


> It's only the part in parenthesis that disturbs people. If I told you that you can now search your drop box via open AI's integration, you wouldn't really care.

I would. I have had lawyers and real estate agents in the past who use Dropbox for sensitive and ID verification documents. I don't want that data going anywhere it wasn't explicitly sent to.

I can understand why some users might not care, but you can't generalize your own opinions/needs/requirements on the matter to everyone. That's the whole reason settings exist.


I'm referring entirely to the kerfuffle. your inability to control your Dropbox isn't exactly dropboxs' responsibility.

that's not an opinion. this entire switch thing is basically a standard 3rd party API. if you don't like the optin nature, the trouble is between you and your government.


If I told you that you can now search your drop box via open AI's integration, you wouldn't really care

I most certainly would care. I don't know how many times I need to say it: No thank you.


>It's only the part in parenthesis that disturbs people. If I told you that you can now search your drop box via open AI's integration, you wouldn't really care.

I wouldn't be into this at all. Dropbox serves as one form of backing up my files and a shared environment for multiple computers. I don't want it to do anything proactive beyond that.


> If I told you that you can now search your drop box via open AI's integration, you wouldn't really care.

I definitely would. I don’t trust OpenAI with any kind of even remotely personal information and don’t want them anywhere near my files. Not that I’m surprised Dropbox would do such a thing.


Huh?

> What information is shared with third-party partners?

> Your files within Dropbox are sent to a third-party AI only when you chose to interact with AI powered features. For example, when you ask a question about a file.

[0]: https://help.dropbox.com/view-edit/privacy-settings-dropbox-...


If the money men spent any real amount of time with an LLM, they would not be pressuring every enterprise under the sun to find a use case.


Why would they care for it's effectiveness?

The money men care that it's in vogue, and sends a signal to prop up the stocks / make the company seem "innovative".


Money men sell a vision to execs holding purse strings. Spending time with the technology would only hurt the pitch.


Tell HN:


Anyone figured out how we see the hidden setting?




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