Dropbox spooks users with new AI features that send data to OpenAI when used
Dropbox spooks users with new AI features that send data to OpenAI when used
AI feature turned on by default worries users; Dropbox responds to concerns.
They're astonishingly poor at data ownership. When they started Dropbox Paper, a note taking web app, they sent the inline images to a different web domain. The image, doing so, became publicly visible to anyone knowing the URL! They did this without explaining anything to the user.
They also did not clarify who owns the copyright of these images sent to an apparent third party company.
Seriously, Dropbox's user privacy and copyright management is incompetent and untrustworthy.
For some reason I always felt they were not trustworthy, like years and years. This doesn't come as a surprise
I'll throw out my usual plug for Cryptomator, lets me use Dropbox's free offering and they can't datamine a thing because it's encrypted before they get their grubby mitts on it
This looks awesome and very useful. Thank you for sharing it here!
FYI the desktop version is completely free to use and relies on the desktop sync apps of the various cloud storage providers, the android version does cost about £8 but I believe it hooks directly into the providers' APIs so you don't need to install their apps. The free experience was good enough for me that I was willing to fork out for the app, much cheaper in the long run than paying a monthly sub!
It's awesome! I'm running this since years without any problems.
Tomorrow's news: "Find out how - amazingly - ML models can break encryption with this one simple trick! NP hates it!"
True, the safest data is the one that never goes online! But realistically it's a tradeoff between risk and convenience - you can self host your own off-site backup but it's a lot less effort to use a cloud storage provider, both are much less risky than having no backup and losing everything if your drive fails or your house burns down. At least this way I need the provider or my PC to be compromised and the encryption to be broken. TBH if quantum computing suddenly starts breaking encryption everywhere then we'll all have bigger problems like the collapse of every bank in the world!
Sign up for proton drive. screw dropbox
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
In its FAQ, Dropbox contradicts this claim, saying, "We won’t let our third-party partners train their models on our user data without consent."
In July, the company announced an AI-powered feature called Dash that allows AI models to perform universal searches across platforms like Google Workspace and Microsoft Outlook.
Still, multiple Ars Technica staff who had no knowledge of the Dropbox AI alpha found the setting enabled by default when they checked.
It also says, "Only the content relevant to an explicit request or command is sent to our third-party AI partners to generate an answer, summary, or transcript."
Log into your Dropbox account on a desktop web browser, then click your profile photo > Settings > Third-party AI.
On that page, click the switch beside "Use artificial intelligence (AI) from third-party partners so you can work faster in Dropbox" to toggle it into the "Off" position.
Saved 72% of original text.