<story><title>How Dropbox sacrifices user privacy for cost savings </title><url>http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/04/how-dropbox-sacrifices-user-privacy-for.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>arashf</author><text>Hi all, Arash from Dropbox here. We understand the concern that the government could try to guess whether a particular file has been uploaded to Dropbox based on processing times and then request that Dropbox identify a user who has access to that file. However, to seek user content information, the government needs to comply with the provisions of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act by obtaining a warrant supported by probable cause (or in some cases a court order from a judge). Those safeguards protect user privacy. De-duplication does not make users any more vulnerable to intrusive government actions. Today, a government agency could ask any online service to provide the names of all users who have a particular file, whether or not the service employs de-duplication. And in that case, the government would also need to support its request with a warrant or court order. The rules that provide a check against unwarranted government snooping apply to online services equally, regardless of their back-end architecture.</text></comment>
<story><title>How Dropbox sacrifices user privacy for cost savings </title><url>http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/04/how-dropbox-sacrifices-user-privacy-for.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pacemkr</author><text>I think most of us, if we were developing Dropbox, would have made the same decisions. De-duping at the cost of complete privacy, even in the face of law, is a sound technical and business decision for a service such as Dropbox.&lt;p&gt;When I think Dropbox, I think sharing, I think convenience, I don&apos;t think backup and security. For backup I need more space, for security I need to use my own private key (not a password that one can change/recover). Neither of these things is offered by Dropbox. And this is the reason why I never confused Dropbox with, say, CrashPlan. One is a way to share and collaborate, the other is a place to send my private key encrypted bits to.&lt;p&gt;My individual privacy is not compromised by somebody being able to say if a certain file is stored by the entirety of Dropbox user base. The other claim, that, given a court order, Dropbox can be forced to turn over your files or tell the court if you store a certain file _may_ be true, but I don&apos;t think Dropbox, the company, has ever promised that level of security.</text></comment>