Dropbox's 'Project Infinite' Introduces Cloud Storage to Free Up Hard Drive Space

[tigres]

there is no other program I live by more than dropbox. my world literally revolves around it, in ever way business and personal.

I would never trust apple (cloud services) like I do db. I do loathe to have one service so relied upon, but they do such a damn good job... I trust them.

 

[manu chao]

I'm curious - why not?

I've never heard of them having any data leaks or breaches or any other problems.

There have been data breaches. Most famously, a few years ago, other people's accounts were accessible without a password for a few hours or so (if I remember it correctly).

But how well they protect their own servers is one aspect of security. Another is whether hacking Dropbox's servers (or just them having a bad apple among their system admins) exposes your files. Which is the case because while your files are encrypted when 'at rest' on their servers, Dropbox has the key to decrypt them (which they ensure us only a very small number of their employees have access to).

This is different from systems with end-to-end encryption like iMessage or since a short while Whatsapp where hacking their server doesn't expose user content because the companies don't have a decryption key. With iMessage, every endpoint device (iPhone, iPad, Mac) sends out a public key to all other endpoint devices and when an iMessage is sent actually multiple messages are sent simultaneously each encrypted with the public key of the respective endpoint device it is directed at.

 

[tentales]

Client-side encryption should entirely be up to you, the end user, not a third-party file sync service. Macs have FireVault built-in. Your entire drive is encrypted when enabled. Done.

Absolutely not!
Encryption is an unnecessary burden. A step many users don't take because it's work, cpu cycles and simple another step in an already complex set of file management tasks.
If I PAY for a cloud service, I should expect the provider to keep me safe and not transmit my data in the clear and then encrypt it at their end.

FileVault has nothing to do with Cloud data security. It's client based and works in the background. Apart from checking a tick box there's no great user effort needed to manage it. Or did you think that FileVault data is encrypted when you send it to Dropbox ?
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People complain about Apple's offering, yet they have cheap options like 5GB for free, 50GB for 99¢, etc. I can get a bunch of storage from Apple for $11.88 a year. 100GB from Google is only $23.88 a year.
Why can't Dropbox offer something for less than $100 or more storage than 2GB??

After all these years Dropbox still defaults to 2GB. Even after getting a bunch of affiliate/friend signups, I think I'm only up to 7GB with them. I'd pay for more, but I don't want to start at $100.

People? Which people exactly? You quoted me here. I did not complain about Apple's offering.
After many years Apple finally offers a reasonable tiered cloud pricing model, but still no client-side encryption, just end-to-end but Apple retains a master key and can (if the FBI asks) unlock your iCloud data.

There's always a work-around, by using a 3rd party client-side encryption software, but how many vendors do you really want "handling" your data ?

 

[Keane16]

It's not exactly fair to use old evidence as an indication of current privacy negligence.

Who said I was highlighting current privacy negligence? I was replying to ArtOfWarfare who was unaware of any previous issues with Dropbox and curious why some may not want to use the service.

 

[wschutz]

No it's not. NFS, AFS, etc. don't work when the computer is offline for even a moment. CIFS starting in Windows 7 or maybe 8, I believe, let you cache files for offline use. As stated, the closest cloud product was OneDrive on Windows 8.

Note the quotes... it is of course not the same as NFS/AFS/... the idea behind is. Synced remote storage with smart caching capabilities, something that could be added to these protocols instead of creating yet another closed sourced 'technology' and claiming as it was never seen before when the bulk of the idea exists from long time ago.

 

[agentx]

Maybe they should address "conflicted files" and use oplocks ;-)

 

[69Mustang]

Who said I was highlighting current privacy negligence? I was replying to ArtOfWarfare who was unaware of any previous issues with Dropbox and curious why some may not want to use the service.

You're 100% right. Apologies for the misinterpretation.

 

[Tanax]

Does anyone know how the placeholder files are created?

 

[emily-ness]

Unless I missed something, doesn't younity already do this?