Dropbox does not admit that some researchers have access to non-anonymous user service data.
Let's see how everything started:
A study που was published on Friday by Northwestern University researchers, reportedly drew information by a Dropbox information manager, The study looked at how collaboration platforms are used by different groups of people.
The investigation states at one point that Dropbox “gave [researchers] access to folder data” for two years from about 400.000 users in 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."
However, the researchers claimed that they saw "every Dropbox file associated with a particular researcher, those with whom the file was shared, how often they had access to the file, whoever was connected to it, the length of their stay in each project." , and the way users managed their time on the various 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, making any identifiable user information unreadable, such as emails and shared folder IDs."
"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 whether those whose data were used were asked for their express permission. Dropbox has not yet responded. It is also unclear what role or access her employee had companys in the data and why Dropbox didn't check the results before they were published.
____________________________
- Deep Web search engines for researchers
- Dark Patterns: How they mislead the wrong privacy options
- ICANN, unprepared for the implementation of GDPR in WHOIS
- Secure-K Linux OS security based on Debian
- Windows Hello cheating with a photo
