Dropbox does not admit that some researchers gained access to non-anonymous data its users services.
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 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 was on each project , and how 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 really contained errorwhich we are trying to fix," 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 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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