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Dropbox Kills Public Folders, Users Rebel (ndtv.com)
New submitter rkagerer writes: Dropbox unleashed a tidal wave of user backlash yesterday when it announced plans to eradicate its Public folder feature in 2017. Criticism from users whose links will break surfaced on Reddit, HackerNews and its own forums. Overnight, customers up-voted a feature request to reverse the decision, skyrocketing it to a "Top 10" position on the company's tracker. joemck explains: "There are countless users who have been using the public folder to post images and files in blogs and forums. These aren't just worthless jokes and memes that nobody will miss if you flip the switch and break all of them. These are often valuable resources that users have created and entrusted to you to retain and keep online." One user even created a comic strip for the occasion, with another concerned the URL he registered with the Coast Guard containing potentially lifesaving information will go dark. Although the feature was deprecated in 2012, it remained in place for existing users. The company provides an alternative sharing method, but some users claim it's not as convenient and doesn't provide direct links. According to the announcement, free accounts have until March 15 to update their links, while the lights will go out for paid accounts on September 1. UPDATE 12/17/16: Slashdot reader rkagerer notes, "Dropbox quietly killed the feature request after this story hit the front page, but the original content can still be found interleaved in the forum discussion."
Cannot control tubes!
It's becoming more and more apparent that the on line economy needs to get real. That is, more transparent with costs, charging, whether things are actually really 'free' etc.
This is another example.
The only thing I ever see it used for is malware hosting. There are a lot of services where you can host images or PDFs if you need to. Dropbox allowed any file type, including EXE's, and it was abused to hell and gone as a repository for malware payloads.
I pay for a Dropbox account, and have a number of public folders which I would be very annoyed with having vanish... actually it's a bi reason why I sue dropbox and may go elsewhere if this feature vanishes.
If Dropbox needs me to pay more per month to maintain this feature, fine - just let me know how much it is to do so. But just to take it away because they can't make it work financially seems like a poor move.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...a publicity stunt...
While I personally do no hold a Dropbox account, this decision pisses me off to no end just as much as it does their own users. When looking for rare content required for administering and managing legacy hardware and software, users have been hosting them on public Dropbox accounts. This includes PDF manuals, firmware updates (required for security!) and other useful shit that vendors either no longer provide, or have entirely gone out of business and have no way to get the content from. Yes, the people who host this content on Dropbox right now could move it, but there are thousands and thousands of forum links that will literally break over night and would need the authors to go back and edit said links to point to the new storage locations.
The cloud is someone else's hard drive attached to someone else's server in someone else's data center at the end of an Internet pipe controlled by someone else. If that works for you - and it might! - great. But do be aware of what you are doing.
sPh
Dropbox is (and most primarily still is) about keeping stuff in sync across your devices, not being a hosting solution for your blog's files & memes. Sure, it was a nice side-feature, but I'd much rather keep the former forever then keep the latter feature until they shutter for being non-profitable.
Seriously people, use Google Drive and Imgur - that's why they exist.
Too many people have bought off on the mantra of "cloud" services. Your data is at the mercy of others.
Fine for "free" users. You get what you pay for, and can't expect any more. But for paid users, this is evil. At the very least, they should maintain all existing links, while forcing new content to change to the new schema.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
These are often valuable resources that users have created and entrusted to you to retain and keep online.
Never trust a third party to keep things available for you. Especially - but not exclusively - if you're not paying them.
Anything I ever find online that I have the slightest expectation of ever wanting to use again I save locally. From images to youtube videos to anything else. It's also one of the (many) reasons why I pirate instead of using netflix etc.
This has saved me more times than I can count. Just a couple hours ago I looked up an old video I remembered on youtube only to discover google had ripped out its audio because there was five seconds of copyrighted music somewhere in it. Thankfully I have a local copy on my laptop.
Online companies are using the same BS strategy from the first internet boom and this one will end just as badly. Promise users the world for free (to build scale rapidly), become the dominant player in your niche, and then come up with a business plan that entails taking back the expensive but high-utility services that customers came to you in the first place for. The process is entirely backwards because it eliminates the price-discovery feedback loop that businesses need in order to establish whether their business model/pricing is even workable.
.... for DropBox to change public document access to a redirect, provided by the owner of the dropbox folder? The person will have to find a new host and provide the url to DropBox so that it can redirect, obviously, and then DB's public document system basically turns into url redirection mechanism so that the existing links don't break if the person who had uploaded the doc finds a new host for the content.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I had a few "free" lifetime apps and services that reverted to a paywall or charge for the pleasure now. Google features like Maps and Picasa? They change or get deprecated and within a few years links and embedded features disappear. My MS OneDrive "forever free ~25gig cloud storage" has been cut in half. I've learned not to trust any second or third party online channels for anything other than temporary stuff. Hopefully the new "lifetime" in today's world hasn't been modified to actually mean five years. "The end of the world as we know it ..." could be only four years away or Jan. 20, 2017.
How dare they give only 4 years of deprecation warning, only 3 months specific warning to non-paying users, and only 9 months specific warning to paying users!?! Apparently the Coast Guard has no other place to store documents! People will drown!
See subject & #1 result on ZEUS (& it's always 'online' status) https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/monitor.php?filter=lastupdated/ meaning it proves my subject line above (& that's only 1 source albeit an extremely respected valid one from the online security community...)
* I've personally seen them active for many, Many, MANY years (2004 or so iirc) in fact as I build my custom hosts file & firewall rules vs. threats like ZEUS (& pretty much all known others).
THIS IS a PROBLEM w/ "PUBLIC STORAGE" idea & yes, "Cloud Computing" too (in part for the latter) - it does get abused for the purposes of malware-in-general - like a LOT of things do but it doesn't make it a GOOD thing when it's used for BAD things (much tech gets abused thus - doesn't make it ok either).
APK
P.S.=> Proof's in the pudding - I can supply more upon request... apk
Cloud = other people's computers + other people's software.
Any and all clouds that you depend on will one day vaporise.
"... while the lights will go out for paid accounts on September 1."
Even if you pay for it.
Dropbox is a convenient service.
No one cares that you can go to the inconvenience of getting your own server for $10/mo. It's still a big fucking hassle. Especially for non-technical people.
I have a server I rent. Average people understand things like a Dropbox folder on their computer or phone. They don't understand FTP. They wouldn't have a fucking clue how to use such a thing on their iPhone.
Dropbox is convenient. A private server is for someone technical. Most people aren't technical.
I don't understand why people are so outraged. This is the very nature of cloud services -- you store your information on someone else's servers, depending on their whims to keep that information accessible. There are no guarantees that the information you put on someone's servers today will still be there tomorrow.
What I find the most stunning is that some people are putting, "...valuable resources that users have created and entrusted to you to retain and keep online" on someone else's servers, and expecting that it will still be there when they need it.
but not money. I never understand why, given what 2 minutes on google will teach you about wealth disparity on this planet, that folks don't get that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
These companies have very few employees, which are the main cost of any business. So they get lots of investor capital because if 9 out of 10 fail or even 99 out of 100 then the 1 success pays for all the failures and the failures become tax write offs were with lots and lots of paper money lost but nothing of any real value.
Now, take away the ability to shift tax write offs for company A to cover company B's profits and maybe there's be a problem. But even then that one success in 100 is so crazy profitable I'm not sure that would matter. When companies talk scale what they mean is lots of money coming in and few employees driving up costs.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Shuts down free service that turned out to be worthless for the bottom line. Bottom feeders rage for days.
After this story hit the front page, Dropbox quietly killed off some of the links it points to (go figure).
The original feature request along with all its comments up until it was squashed has been faithfully recreated.
Here's the coast guard comment, and a snapshot of the Top 10 list as it appeared Friday afternoon.
Looks like nobody learned from 100s of examples.
you can't trust cloud service providers, especially cloud storage providers. at all.
if you want to host something - files, web sites, whatever - host it yourself. it's not hard.
even if you don't have a reliable internet connection at your office or home, a VPS is cheap (but make sure you backup everything on it regularly, at least nightly, to another machine on a different network so that you can host it elsewhere if you ever need to - you can't trust hosting providers either, but at least you have direct access to all the files and configuration details).
See subject & this link w/ said proof of YOUR words https://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10006023&cid=53501217/
APK
P.S.=> I'm sure it's also used for benign purposes & innocently enough but like a lot of tech, it gets abused for malicious purposes... apk
Switch-and-bait made fortunes for many. I think of some very successful companies as robber barons of the digital era.
Live by the cloud, die by the cloud...
You want your data? Then you're responsible for it. Right now, in the end, network presence costs somebody money. If you're not paying in some way, you can expect your data to go away at some point when they get tired of paying for you. Even if you are paying, eventually, they'll try and gain more profit by trimming service, and again you lose. Corporations always have to increase profit. The shareholders demand it. And you, you're the source of it. Anything you cost them, they will look to reduce if they possibly can.
Plus, you can't trust them. These services variously demand your name, your email, your mobile phone number, your mother's maiden name, your social security number... and then, bam, breach...
Most people on slashdot have no excuse. Set up an isolated server on its own wan-facing network, secure it, anything you want public facing, back it up off-LAN and then sneaker-net it to the server in a USB stick or whatever. Anything you don't want public facing... don't put it on the server. Put all those massively insecure home automation devices on the same network; then they can go crazy compromising security in an environment where they can't get at your non-public data. Watch the network traffic form the server, and if any of them start playing the "I am a botnet zombie", set them on fire and write off the manufacturer as a source of devices. The only way we'll ever get these companies to make good devices is if we make them pay for selling insecure crap. Plus, maybe then they'll hire real programmers again instead of these glorified script kiddies and cookie-cutter green-carders who don't know what a memory overrun even is.
Control your own destiny instead of handing it over to corporate entities. Otherwise... it's very likely going to bite you eventually.
Live by the cloud, die by the cloud...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Actually the title should read...
Dropbox killing deep linking resources
This after reading hundreds of comments and concerns on the various forum topics about how most people were mad about having to update their websites and the "thousands" of links that point to these resources.
Rogue One
If you think Dropbox or any cloud provider doesn't snoop on your stuff, wake up and smell the roses. I know for a fact that Microsoft does. Now it seems the Dropbox does too, no matter what they say about encryption, etc. I suspect that Gmail is next. Lots of storage space, easy sharing too but I doubt they like what some people are sharing. Sensitive stuff should be encrypted in the cloud and everything should be backed up on optical or something similar. My 2 cents.
Er - just switch to Google Drive. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WgI8GMo47XU-RWgkDf4_m7P5hiTkiTCc4t06V9WIK2E/edit It's cheaper, faster and has online editing tool