Can someone explain Dropbox to me?

[markgoodrich]

A friend got me to install it on my computers and android devices. I understood that I'd then be able to access all my photos from any of my devices.

 

Suddenly this evening photos started uploading to MY DROPBOX folder...photos from my friend's computer. I immediately uninstalled the program from everything.

 

How can someone else get access to my Dropbox account? I thought it was for me to put things, and share what I want. Pissed me off....

[Mike]

It sounds like you somehow got signed in under your friend's account. Or, possibly, you gave him access to put things in your Dropbox (I believe that can be done with an access code or with a third party app). It's worked perfectly for me.

 

Hate to say it, but I think we're looking at operator error.

[markgoodrich]

Mike, you're probably right, but I never saw an access code of any type, nor would I have granted one. Perhaps I somehow got signed in on my friend's account.

 

After posting I went to the Dropbox website and read a little about it. Apparently ALL PHOTOS are public. I don't want that, so I'll stay off the system. Andy Weiner should, too. But for different reasons.

[szurszewski]

+1 on being signed it to your friend's account.

 

Another possibility is that you two are sharing a "shared folder."

 

When you installed DB at the beginning, did you follow a link sent by your friend? If so, and if you still have it, look back over and see if the link included something like: "wants to share this folder" with you...

 

If you click on the DropBox icon in your taskbar (or wherever that things is called with all the little icons for the stuff you're running), and choose launch website, it should show you who you are logged in as. (Well, if you hadn't uninstalled it...)

 

I've had good success with DP, though it does sometimes decide not to update machines unless you tell it to, but that's pretty rare. I've also had trouble running three different accounts simultaneously, but that's not a supported feature, so I have no complaints there.

[markgoodrich]

Harrumph. I must have signed up through his account. I'll try doing it direct from the website. Still don't like all photos being publicly shared. Will see of I can get around that. Thanks, guys.

[szurszewski]

PS: I don't use mine for photos, but I think that only photos in the "Photos" folder are automatically public, as is anything in your "Public" folder.

 

Back when I first had Dropbox, you could only share (by making a link and sending it out to people who would use the link to download whatever file) things in your Public folder, but now you can share a download link to any file anywhere in your Dropbox.

 

So, I think if you want to have photos but not have them public, you can just keep them in some other folder.

 

josh

 

pps - I find DB to be really useful - I have one account for my personal stuff, another that my two partners and I use for our small business, and another (a paid 100gb account - the others are the small free accounts) that I use for a statewide curriculum development project. Dropbox makes it so I have access to all the files on my laptop, desktop and my phone!

[Mike]

I find it useful, but don't put photos on it, mostly because of the added storage cost. It's nice to be able to easily access a document from multiple devices.

[pbharvey]

I know a guy who distributes price lists, inventory sheets, etc. to his field employees via Dropbox. They always have the most recent copy at their disposal because when he edits the master they see the most recent update. He also told me he can "pull stuff back" if they terminate employment. Is there such a thing on Dropbox that would prevent a user (a sub-user say) from printing things out? Besides sharing can Dropbox be used to share info yet also control the distribution or more accurately distribution and downloading?

[szurszewski]

I know a guy who distributes price lists, inventory sheets, etc. to his field employees via Dropbox. They always have the most recent copy at their disposal because when he edits the master they see the most recent update. He also told me he can "pull stuff back" if they terminate employment. Is there such a thing on Dropbox that would prevent a user (a sub-user say) from printing things out? Besides sharing can Dropbox be used to share info yet also control the distribution or more accurately distribution and downloading?

 

Speaking only as a user, I haven't seen anything in Dropbox that would stop anyone with access to a file from printing. Also, Dropbox actually creates a copy of each file on each local machine (though you can also access them via a web browser and the Dropbox website) in a "Dropbox" folder, so any user could simply copy any file into another non-Dropbox folder. If you "disconnect" a machine from the account, it will give you the choice between keeping the files on that machine or deleting them, but that will only apply to the Dropbox folder - it won't know about anything you copied to some other location.

 

There certainly might be more pro-user level tools/functions within Dropbox that let you lock files, or that force a machine to delete files when the account is disconnected, but I haven't seen them and it seems like it would be easy to circumvent them.

 

For shared folders, once someone shares a folder with me, it is as if I am an owner: I can change whatever I like in the folder (which will also change the files, or file structure {meaning I can reorganize the files within the folder} on any other machines with the same folder), I can invite anyone else I want to the folder, and I can see a list of everyone who is sharing that folder. About the only restriction is that if I choose to "leave" the folder, I have to be invited back in before Dropbox will go back to updating the files on my machine (if I chose to keep them when I "left").

 

 

[Francois_Dumas]

Mark, I use it with some 20 people.... sort of like a corporate network server.

You can assign shared folders and give access to each and every individual, or not. So PER FOLDER you have separate access rights.

 

And NONE of the material in any of those folders is automatically 'public'... YOU decide that.

 

What probably happened is that you shared a folder with your friend ..... Either he or you made the folder and gave access to the other. From then on every file change made in that folder, will be updated on your end as well.

 

It can get a bit confusing, especially when you have multiple people using it, some of which may have nothing to do with each other. On YOUR PC it looks as if they are all connected, since all those people (and folders are within the ONE dropbox folder in your Explorer.

 

It helps going to the Dropbox website and open your account there, It looks a bit more tidy than on your own Explorer :-)

[Mike]

I know a guy who distributes price lists, inventory sheets, etc. to his field employees via Dropbox. They always have the most recent copy at their disposal because when he edits the master they see the most recent update. He also told me he can "pull stuff back" if they terminate employment. Is there such a thing on Dropbox that would prevent a user (a sub-user say) from printing things out? Besides sharing can Dropbox be used to share info yet also control the distribution or more accurately distribution and downloading?

 

Speaking only as a user, I haven't seen anything in Dropbox that would stop anyone with access to a file from printing. Also, Dropbox actually creates a copy of each file on each local machine (though you can also access them via a web browser and the Dropbox website) in a "Dropbox" folder, so any user could simply copy any file into another non-Dropbox folder. If you "disconnect" a machine from the account, it will give you the choice between keeping the files on that machine or deleting them, but that will only apply to the Dropbox folder - it won't know about anything you copied to some other location.

 

There certainly might be more pro-user level tools/functions within Dropbox that let you lock files, or that force a machine to delete files when the account is disconnected, but I haven't seen them and it seems like it would be easy to circumvent them.

 

For shared folders, once someone shares a folder with me, it is as if I am an owner: I can change whatever I like in the folder (which will also change the files, or file structure {meaning I can reorganize the files within the folder} on any other machines with the same folder), I can invite anyone else I want to the folder, and I can see a list of everyone who is sharing that folder. About the only restriction is that if I choose to "leave" the folder, I have to be invited back in before Dropbox will go back to updating the files on my machine (if I chose to keep them when I "left").

 

 

Just a thought on the topic of locking items from printing: In Adobe Acrobat, you can assign security settings that prohibit someone without the proper security code from printing. If this is a critical concern, you can always save a file as a PDF, apply those settings, and share it in any way you'd like.

 

Of course, this limits what the user can do with the file in other ways, too.