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It's very strange that after I remove Dropbox from the accessibility list you think it's ok to add it back in again. That's the reason I'll be closing my accou

It's very strange that after I remove Dropbox from the accessibility list you think it's ok to add it back in again. That's the reason I'll be closing my account.

__jal 10y ago
Absolutely. I dropped Dropbox some time back, when it became obvious that they didn't respect the user's wishes at all. This has been a long-standing thing with them - some years back there was some stink about the forced Dropbox branding in the Finder (which we now see is related to this). Many people (including me) found it rude that it insists on adding useless widgets, badging icons and inserting crap in the Finder sidebar. For whatever reason, Dropbox (the corporation) apparently believes that junk to be important enough to their business to disregard what the owner of the machine wants, and now we see the lengths they go through to force themselves on the user. I used to simply consider Dropbox rude enough to make me not want to use it. Now that I see the company is actively going out of their way to break the intended function of security-related OS components, I now consider Dropbox malware and will begin warning others about the company.
- cstejerean 10y ago
  For what it's worth I find the finder icons and sidebar additions to be nice touch, but I guess it would be nice to be able to disable that. The office integration on the other hand is beyond useless. The Dropbox badge mostly gets in the way of being able to scroll trough my documents and I have never used it for anything.
  - ddeville 10y ago
    You can disable the Finder integration in the preferences, same for the badge.
- danieldk 10y ago
  badging icons and inserting crap in the Finder sidebar Their branding strategy is really annoying. I pay 10 Euro per month for Dropbox Pro, but they have Dropbox Business ads plastered all over the web interface.
Dylan16807 10y ago
Most programs don't consider that you might try to explicitly revoke permissions. It's a very understandable bug/behavior. I think it's worth giving them a chance to amend that code.
- moosemilkie 10y ago
  It didn't even ask for permission the first time.
jimmaswell 10y ago
Why would you even do that? What nefarious and yet undiscovered things did you think DropBox was likely to do specifically with the accessibility permission? Permission systems in general seem like a solution without a problem to me. Nobody but a minority of people very concerned about theoretical security problems wanted them on platforms that didn't have them, almost nobody cares what permissions programs use on platforms that have them now, and people get along perfectly fine and with less inconvenience shoved in their face running programs without permissions systems aside from a simple admin rights/no admin rights today on Windows and Linux.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  Right, they have all your files already, so there's clearly some level of trust.
  - Johnny555 10y ago
    They only have (well should only have) access to the files I share on Dropbox, which is pretty much just music files, so if someone steals those files, I won't be too upset.
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    > they have all your files already Hell no they don't? They have some shared folders between classmates and a few encrypted archives for personal backups.
    - chris_7 10y ago
      1. Dropbox asks for root 2. Dropbox does not use sandboxing (at least, the one I have doesn't) So, they do.
      - lucb1e 10y ago
        There is a difference between having all my files and being able to access all my files via a client. 1) My files are not on their service and thus not available at their discretion; they would first have to be uploaded. 2) With that logic all applications "have" all my files, but you bet I'd find it weird if I caught Libreoffice uploading files of interest to a service of theirs. That said, I do see your point. Most desktop applications (as opposed to mobile apps) are capable of a lot more than they need to, and even many popular mobile apps are. I just wouldn't say I implicitly trust them with all of my files.
derptron 10y ago
I closed my account when they put a former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor on the Board of Directors for no apparent reason.

It's very strange that after I remove Dropbox from the accessibility list you think it's ok to add it back in again. That's the reason I'll be closing my account.

__jal 10y ago

Absolutely. I dropped Dropbox some time back, when it became obvious that they didn't respect the user's wishes at all. This has been a long-standing thing with them - some years back there was some stink about the forced Dropbox branding in the Finder (which we now see is related to this). Many people (including me) found it rude that it insists on adding useless widgets, badging icons and inserting crap in the Finder sidebar. For whatever reason, Dropbox (the corporation) apparently believes that junk to be important enough to their business to disregard what the owner of the machine wants, and now we see the lengths they go through to force themselves on the user. I used to simply consider Dropbox rude enough to make me not want to use it. Now that I see the company is actively going out of their way to break the intended function of security-related OS components, I now consider Dropbox malware and will begin warning others about the company.

cstejerean 10y ago
For what it's worth I find the finder icons and sidebar additions to be nice touch, but I guess it would be nice to be able to disable that. The office integration on the other hand is beyond useless. The Dropbox badge mostly gets in the way of being able to scroll trough my documents and I have never used it for anything.
- ddeville 10y ago
  You can disable the Finder integration in the preferences, same for the badge.
danieldk 10y ago
badging icons and inserting crap in the Finder sidebar Their branding strategy is really annoying. I pay 10 Euro per month for Dropbox Pro, but they have Dropbox Business ads plastered all over the web interface.

Dylan16807 10y ago

Most programs don't consider that you might try to explicitly revoke permissions. It's a very understandable bug/behavior. I think it's worth giving them a chance to amend that code.

moosemilkie 10y ago
It didn't even ask for permission the first time.

jimmaswell 10y ago

Why would you even do that? What nefarious and yet undiscovered things did you think DropBox was likely to do specifically with the accessibility permission? Permission systems in general seem like a solution without a problem to me. Nobody but a minority of people very concerned about theoretical security problems wanted them on platforms that didn't have them, almost nobody cares what permissions programs use on platforms that have them now, and people get along perfectly fine and with less inconvenience shoved in their face running programs without permissions systems aside from a simple admin rights/no admin rights today on Windows and Linux.

guitarbill 10y ago
Right, they have all your files already, so there's clearly some level of trust.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  They only have (well should only have) access to the files I share on Dropbox, which is pretty much just music files, so if someone steals those files, I won't be too upset.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  > they have all your files already Hell no they don't? They have some shared folders between classmates and a few encrypted archives for personal backups.
  - chris_7 10y ago
    1. Dropbox asks for root 2. Dropbox does not use sandboxing (at least, the one I have doesn't) So, they do.
    - lucb1e 10y ago
      There is a difference between having all my files and being able to access all my files via a client. 1) My files are not on their service and thus not available at their discretion; they would first have to be uploaded. 2) With that logic all applications "have" all my files, but you bet I'd find it weird if I caught Libreoffice uploading files of interest to a service of theirs. That said, I do see your point. Most desktop applications (as opposed to mobile apps) are capable of a lot more than they need to, and even many popular mobile apps are. I just wouldn't say I implicitly trust them with all of my files.

derptron 10y ago

I closed my account when they put a former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor on the Board of Directors for no apparent reason.