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 collaboration are used by different groups of people.
The research states at one point that Dropbox "gave [researchers] access to dossier data" for two years from about 400.000 users at 1.000 universities. According to the publication, the data were "collected and anonymized" by the researchers.
The researchers reported that the data included the "total number of folders, the structure of each folder, and access to sharedfiles". But according to the researchers, they and Dropbox employees "couldn't 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 a lot of protests through him Twitter by 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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