Dropbox does not admit that some researchers have access to non-anonymous user service data.
Let's see how everything started:
A study that was published on Friday by researchers at Northwestern University, reportedly obtained information from a Dropbox information manager, The study looked at how the platforms cooperationare used by different groups of people.
Η research it mentions at one point that Dropbox “gave [researchers] access to folder data” for two years from about 400.000 users at 1.000 universities. According to the publication, the data was "collected and anonymized" by the researchers.
The researchers said the data included "the total number of folders, the structure of each folder and access to shared folders". But according to investigators, they and Dropbox employees "could not see personal information."
Still, the researchers claimed to see “every folder in Dropbox associated with a particular researcher, who the folder was shared with, how often the folder was accessed, anyone connected to it, how long everyone stayed in each project, and how users managed their time across projects.”
The above reports led to many Twitter protests from well-known academics.
On the other hand, Dropbox denied all of the above with a statement posted electronically to ZDNet:
"The article contained real errors that we are trying to correct," said Dropbox spokeswoman Elisa Pandolfi.
“To be clear, before giving Dropbox user data to researchers, Dropbox permanently anonymized it, rendering any identifiable user information unreadable, such as emails post officeand the identifiers of the shared folders”.
"This process prevented [the researchers] from seeing any of the personal information, but allowed them to analyze the data anonymously," the statement said.
On the other hand, it is not known if their data was explicitly requested by those who used their data. DrOpbox has not responded for the time being. Also, it is not clear what the role or access of the company employee in the data and why Dropbox did not check the results before they were published.
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