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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."
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
I pay for a Dropbox account...
I pay for my domain name, host all data on my server and back the server content encrypted to my home machine and to a friend of mine home machine. I never had any problems. I have always been puzzled by people trusting free services to host their important and even sometimes sensitive data.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
A lot of these folks think that the bandwidth being used by serving up images from free Dropbox accounts to web pages is, well, free. They are sort of idiots to think that Dropbox would continue to let them freeload like this as Dropbox faces increasing price pressure from providers like Amazon, OneDrive, Box, and others (none of which have quite the feature set of DropBox, but all of which have the basic storage often at a better price).
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.
You should be pissed of at the users who baked-in a Dropbox feature that has been deprecated for nearly 5 years.
I can't imagine why it wouldn't be obvious to anyone that this was a tenuous situation that Dropbox has had many good reasons to discontinue.
I pay for my domain name, host all data on my server and back the server content encrypted to my home machine and to a friend of mine home machine.
Unlike the child posters, I'll refrain from being an AC. If your process could be made derp-proof, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately, few non-geeks have the acumen to implement such a backup plan. The Cloud(tm) remains the only practical solution for most.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
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.
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.