The truth about Dropbox opening up your files to AI – and the loss of trust in tech

Cloud storage biz Dropbox spent time on Wednesday trying to clean up a misinformation spill because someone was wrong on the internet. Through exposure to the social media echo chamber, various people – including Amazon CTO Werner Vogels – became convinced that Dropbox, which introduced a set of AI tools in July, was by …

[Omnipresent]

It's not just a loss of trust.

If you look at what's happening, it's very obviously facts.

Why in the world should the human race put it's trust in a hand full of digital outlaws with no common morals or sense of decency, who have broken all humane laws in the name of self interest and greed time, and time, and time again. These people are very obviously abusing the worst of society against humanity in a self absorbed, and self realized "I'm better than you" abuser game. It's an attempt to feel smarter, more important, and more of a deity by being RICHER, by any means necessary. That very obviously means "hobnobbing", and going to bed with the worst of the worst. These are very bad people, doing very bad things, working against humanity. But, who's going to stop them? Not anyone with any humanity left. The machines won, in the name of quick money. It won't stop there either. It will continue to grow for generations. Destroying all in it's path, long after the monkeys have been assimilated.

[Gene Cash]

Dropbox have been dicks in the past

People were simply assuming they were continuing to be dicks.

Trust was lost long ago.

[Mike 137]

Re: Dropbox have been dicks in the past

"Trust was lost long ago"

Trust (in its true sense of a decision made on the basis of evidence or experience) was never really gained in the first place. You can't trust in something you're not told about. The true definition of what these behemoths and their advocates call "trust" is "being taken for a ride" -- not the same thing at all.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Dropbox have been dicks in the past

I stopped using them when they tried to tell me which filesystem to use.. I switched to syncthing and never looked back.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Dropbox have been dicks in the past

Indeed. I never trusted Dropbox since the day I heard of them, and I've never seen any evidence to suggest I should. And I don't particularly care how much of that is possible malice and how much is possible incompetence.

[nonoj]

Re: Dropbox have been dicks in the past

I used Dropbox, sparingly, until Condoleeza Rice was appointed to the board in 2014. I immediately deleted everything on my Dropbox account and deleted the account. I then wrote an email to Drew Houston explaining my departure and asking why they would do such a thing. The condescending boiler plate response was not worth saving.

[Cincinnataroo]

IQ test

We know these people lie, we know they don't get much punished, we should expect repeat offences.

If you object to this sort of thing, treat this as an IQ test.

If you don't trust them you can ditch the service (however hard that may be). Test passed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, please stop being so cynical people. Give the guy a break. I personally choose to believe him when he says they aren't selling your data .... this Tuesday (morning)

[An_Old_Dog]

They're NOT Selling Your Data!

Instead, they're trading it for other peoples' data, trading it for discounts on services, &c.

[Joe W]

Re: They're NOT Selling Your Data!

They are not selling the data.

They are merely renting it out.

Why buy a cow if you just want milk?

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Re: They're NOT Selling Your Data!

I'm imagining them playing a trading card game with people's data now... "I've got a one legged car mechanic from New Zealand here, I'll swap for your Estonian milkmaid who's fluent in Esperanto."

In other news, I have no idea how trading card games work.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: They're NOT Selling Your Data!

I have no idea how trading card games work

You pretty much nailed it though, except you left out the part where your milkmaid then has to fight a Chorizozard or something.

[David 132]

Re: They're NOT Selling Your Data!

Man, other Pokemon are bad, but Chorizozard is the wurst!

[Grunchy]

“The Cloud” is somebody else’s computer. They want your files in case you have some valuable information that can be exploited.

You know why google hosts everybody’s email for free? It’s so that an artificial intelligence can scrape everything that everyone is talking about, and then pose to it interesting questions.

(Such as, “hey google what is the stock market doing tomorrow, where are tomorrow’s 10-baggers,” or “who is getting murdered tomorrow,” etc.)

[David 132]

The FAANGs offering us email / social notice-boards / discounted shopping coupons, and then mining our data, is the Internet Age equivalent of the New World's "Greetings O Chief, how about I give you these nice shiny beads in return for all your land?"

[Pascal Monett]

Don't think so

"There's a lot of confusion about how code, algorithms, cloud services, and business practices work"

We don't care how they work. What we care about is the fact that they are all oriented toward mining our personal lives to sell ads.

And we don't like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Don't think so

They used to be.

Now they are using your work to train AI's to put you out of a job, or more likely to just push down the rate of pay for the work you will be left doing.

[Headley_Grange]

Loss of Trust

The loss of trust thing is a real problem because it limits the ulitimate benefits of tech and has, effectively, put a hard border around it which stops at "advertising tool". For example, it would be beneficial to share health data. A single, shared database of all UK citizens' health data, etc., just on its own would be good for me and the health service and the country. Add in lifestyle data and it would become exponentially more useful both on a personal basis and as a means of advising health policy. If it were opened up to wider sharing and analysis then the benefits could be, literally, life changing. However, I simply don't trust anyone with my data (I've "opted out" of sharing my health data - sorry if this made you laugh and spit tea on your screen), suspecting that 99% of any data mining/synthesis would be used to make my life worse (ads, insurance price increases, scams, .....etc), and 1% used to put lipstick on the pig that is health policy in the UK.

[Julian 8]

Re: Loss of Trust

NHS can't share data between hospitals or doctors etc, but I can guarantee they'll be able to "give" it all to Plantair

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Loss of Trust

Add in lifestyle data and it would become exponentially more useful both on a personal basis and as a means of advising health policy. If it were opened up to wider sharing and analysis then the benefits could be, literally, life changing.

It certainly could be life-changing, since the combination of health and "lifestyle" data would likely make de-anonymization quite easy.

No thanks.

[Will Godfrey]

Not here

I don't have a dropbox account, and was suspicious of them right from the start. Indeed, there are very few online accounts I have of any kind. The only one who looks after your privacy is yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget Dropbox....This Is A HUGE Warning About The Future......

See title!

[JamesMcP]

The Dropbox CEO is lying

I have dropbox and my AI features were enabled.

I occasionally use the Android app as everything else is via automatic sync, and I guarantee you there are no "clearly labeled" AI services on either of those software packages.

And it's not just me. "multiple Ars Technica staff who had no knowledge of the Dropbox AI alpha found the setting enabled by default when they checked." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/dropbox-spooks-users-by-sending-data-to-openai-for-ai-search-features/

[lnLog]

Re: The Dropbox CEO is lying

Likewise, I logged in and this setting was enabled. I've not used dropbox or had it installed for about a year now

[Roland6]

Re: The Dropbox CEO is lying

I suspect the Windows Eula is sufficiently broad to permit Microsoft to use the contents of windows users hard drives to train its AI…

[Anonymous Coward]

Got fired, among other things, for pointing out to directors that dropbox was not only against company policy, but was also incredibly insecure.

Had quite the laugh a few months later when employees got hold of a bunch of documents that proved manglement was screwing them over on bonuses they should have received.

[Gene Cash]

I wouldn't be able to resist phoning some people up and singing 'em the "I tolja so" song

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say one potential response would be to fill up some of your Dropbox quota with LLM-generated, plausible-looking but rubbish documents.

After all, feeding LLM output back to it is supposed to lower the quality dramatically... so messing up your dropbox should, in theory, make your data less valuable and so reduce the temptation to sell it on.

[Anonymous Coward]

"no matter how often these firms mouth their mantra, "We take privacy very seriously.""

Achh, but they *do* take it very seriously. Especially when it looks like you might have any, that's a serious problem.

But Dropbox being an arsehole? That would be a default.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many lessons does it take to eventually learn *something* !!!

*All* companies that 'give' you something for nothing are not your 'friend' !!!

The cost of 'Free or cheap' is 'we will use your data as we choose to create a profit to pay for FREE !!!'.

The internet is not magic and the companies that enable it to exist are not altruists in any form !!!

'Wake up' people you are the 'commodity' and you are being sold cheap ..... each and every day !!!

This suits the mega-corps that are the 'Internet' and it also suits the govt of the day as it potentially gives them more & more information to control you !!!

China is a perfect example of where this can go and most countries envy the control that they have.

So called democracy is such an inconvenience at times !!!

[So called because democracy is more concept that reality today .... we just have not noticed yet as we are 'too busy' playing with 'Social media' et al !!!]

:)

[ecofeco]

Re: How many lessons does it take to eventually learn *something* !!!

How many lessons? How many ya got?

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

- Hegel

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC - Re: How many lessons does it take to eventually learn *something* !!!

Actually, what we call democracy covers only the mechanism for making decisions. It doesn't say a word on the nature of the decisions made, especially if they're good or bad for the public good.

For example you can democratically enact a law to suppress a small (or rather large) group of people or to deprive it from its basic rights.

In short, living in a democracy does not guarantee that everything will be done for your own good. They alleviate this by using the word "public good" but who gets to define its meaning ?

[Proton_badger]

I've been enjoying my free 12GB Dropbox for a long time. Everything is accessed through Cryptomator except Joplin Notes which has its own encryption. It doesn't matter who the cloud provider is, one should always consider an extra client side encryption on top.

[ecofeco]

Loss of trust in tech?

Is this a new thing? I've not trusted tech since the first days my father taught me how to service cars. And that was a long, long time ago.

I love tech and really enjoy its labor saving, but trust it? Never.

[CatWithChainsaw]

If they wanted to be trusted

they shouldn't have taken every opportunity presented to them to show them just how badly they don't deserve it. Even if they spent the next two decades behaving as the pinnacle of ethics I would suspect they were just biding time for another huge Yoinkening.