
Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro - markmassie
https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/08/introducing-more-powerful-dropbox-pro/
======
jamesbritt
Dropbox is morally corrupt and support for them by HN users is disappointing.

I wrote to Dropbox and said I wanted to cancel my account and get a pro-rated
refund because of their hiring of Condoleezza Rice. Her involvement in the
Iraq war and the mass surveillance of Americans is deplorable.

A few days after my request my account was converted to the free version, with
the limitations of the free version. I could no longer sync any files. When I
saw this I assumed I was going to get the refund.

Days passed. I asked about the refund. The support email included disturbingly
fawning about Ms. Rice and how amazing she was, and insisted that the Dropbox
ToS made it flat-out _impossible_ for them to issue any refunds. My account
was changed back to allow the 100 GB of storage and Dropbox acted like it
never botched my request.

It almost funny that they would not even respect differing opinion on their
hiring of Ms. Rice and graciously offer a refund to those offended by such a
move. Hiding behind their own ToS just shows how deaf they are to the matter.
They basically don't give a fuck, and they don't have to because they have
enough people who are more concerned with convenience than principles as amply
shown on HN.

There are very good alternatives to Dropbox. Both SpiderOak and ownCloud work
great on Windows, OSX, and Linux. You can get managed ownCloud hosting if you
don't want to set up your own: [https://owner.io](https://owner.io).

It's puzzling that anyone would trust them with their data given their
behavior.

~~~
encoderer
Why are you entitled to a refund? You disagree with their hiring policies? You
already paid the $99 for 1 year of service. You already bought it. It's done.
Your option is to cancel at renewal or not.

That's my take, anyway. I also asked for a refund when Google announced their
far cheaper plans for GDrive, and this just a month after I renewed. They told
me the same thing -- a policy of no partial refunds. So I asked them to ensure
I would not be auto rebilled, and that was that. Why exactly are they morally
corrupt for this?

~~~
sheetjs
There are two logically consistent ways of handling this type of request:

A) Pro-rate the cost and immediately drop down to a free tier or cancel the
service

B) Disable renewal, but keep the same level of service until the renewal date.

According to OP, he was knocked down to free tier but not issued a refund.
That is incredibly odd, given that he already paid for the service

~~~
jamesbritt
_According to OP, he was knocked down to free tier but not issued a refund.
That is incredibly odd, given that he already paid for the service_

To be clear: The knocked me back to the lower free tier and quota, and only
restored the quota a few days later when I saw no refund and complained.

------
fein
Is there a reason the old thread was killed and this up in its place?

I thought the sales page contained better information than the blog post.

That aside, I feel this needs to be brought up in every Dropbox thread:

Get rid of Condoleezza Rice and I'll happily use your product.

~~~
sheetjs
One possible explanation: Dropbox is a YC company, HN is a YC website, and the
previous discussion seemed to take a turn for the negative

~~~
fein
As it should. We are a community voicing our opinions about a company. If we
find they are doing wrong, shouldn't we say something about it?

~~~
jamesbritt
Absolutely. The support for Dropbox here is disheartening.

~~~
noir_lord
Disheartening to _you_.

I like Dropbox, it solves a none trivial problem in a good way and I don't
care that they hired Condoleeza Rice for their board.

I'm not a American.

~~~
Multics
I'm guessing you're not Iraqi, either.

------
cryoshon
Ditch Condi Rice and apologize for allowing her in, and I'll consider using
Dropbox again.

As it stands, there are an abundance of other companies doing the same thing
as Dropbox which do not associate with known war criminals. This makes them
more desirable business partners.

------
mbillie1
I switched to Copy since the Condoleeza Rice situation and I have had no
problems whatsoever. I have the app running on a macbook pro, an imac and two
android mobile devices. It's also about half the price that Dropbox charges. I
recommend it.

~~~
gnufied
Honest question, how good is their client? The Google Drive client on OSX
appears to be bit shit and I am considering moving everything away to a new
system.

~~~
mbillie1
Honest answer: it seems to be a bit slower than Dropbox, but it's still pretty
good. I haven't had any issues yet (no lost files). They also offer the same
auto-upload of your photos from your smartphone, which I am running on an
Android device, and that works wonderfully as well. I'm a very satisfied
customer.

------
zzleeper
"You now have 1,045.GB .." Quite good news! I now just need a way to exclude
some files (.aux .tmp) and will be set!

~~~
jonnynezbo
Yea, we need a .dbignore, or something of the sort.

~~~
micheljansen
You mean like this?
[http://konolige.com/dbignore/](http://konolige.com/dbignore/)

~~~
jonnynezbo
Wow. Yes. Exactly like that. Good looking out.

------
chmars
It is disappointing that Dropbox still does not offer any options for secure
storage. Personally, you might be fine with unencrypted stories but at least
for companies in Europe, having (all) your data with an American cloud
provider without local encryption on your side is simply not a legal option …

Dropbox is a great service, however, it would be even greater if I could use
Dropbox for all my data and not only selected data where I do not consider
local encryption necessary.

(I know about add-on software like Boxcryptor but all options I have tested so
far were not user-friendly enough … Dropbox competitors with encryption like
Spideroak and Wuala work good enough but are in no way as user-friendly and
convenient as Dropbox.)

~~~
drdaeman
> Dropbox competitors with encryption like Spideroak and Wuala

Unless one doesn't really cares about security and wants encryption for the
sake of having encryption, there's no way their implementations could be
considered sufficient.

Without audit you're just taking their word for it — which is exactly as when
you take Dropbox's word that they won't peek at your data (unencrypted or
possibly encrypted but one can't verify that). And to audit those one needs to
spend a lot of time reverse engineering their applications, and then auto-
update mechanism could render those efforts void at any moment. I've spent
about a weekend debugging and looking at decompiled SpiderOak code and while I
hadn't found anything suspicious (although I'm not a crypto or security
expert) the only judgement I was certain with was "this behemoth's too complex
to study in detail, not worth the time to continue the research"

The point is, the data could be encrypted, but it's pointless to just have the
encryption — to assume some security one must be certain about many aspects of
how it's done — when, how and where encryption keys are generated, when, where
and how data's processed, what are exact crypto algorithms used and how they
are composed together and so on. And, obviously, a possibility to verify the
description completely matches the actual implementation.

So, I think, security should be really done by a separate software module that
could be completely reviewed by anyone (from tech-savvy end-users to security
researchers) and can't be remotely auto-updated without explicit user consent.

~~~
dmix
I don't know about SpiderOak but I totally trust Tarsnap.

But agreed we have to trust the software companies/devs when using crypto.

Not many people really trust Dropbox anymore to build client-side encryption
themselves. But you could use a different program for encryption with dropbox
as simple storage. That being said, you still have to trust the Dropbox
binaries installed on your system as well. Security paranoia can go deep.

~~~
scott_karana
You can examine the source of Tarsnap, though, unlike Dropbox or Spideroak.

------
jonnynezbo
I've been waiting on this for a long time. Now Dropbox might actually be a
viable, affordable off-site backup solution.

~~~
ptwiggens
Dropbox isn't ideal for backup at all.

Look into Crashplan. Client-side encryption, unlimited versioning, never
deletes files, and only $6/month for truly unlimited backup.

~~~
StavrosK
Does it have an OSS Linux client, even headless?

All I want is to encryptedly back up some directories on my home server, but
nothing* really does that. I use SpiderOak at the moment, but it's not OSS.

* Except attic, but I'd rather pay for a service as important as this (I don't trust the remote server to not lose files): [http://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/](http://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
[http://www.tarsnap.com/](http://www.tarsnap.com/)

[http://rsync.net/](http://rsync.net/)

~~~
StavrosK
Thanks, but both of those are extremely expensive for backing up photos and
various files (100 GB worth).

~~~
rsync
Just a note since we're on the topic ...

\- HN Discount for new customers is 10c per GB, per month. No charges for
usage or traffic, etc.

\- We just began announcing 3c pricing for 1PB and above. That may be more
space than you require, however.

We've adjusted our pricing quite a bit in the last 30 days in conjunction with
offering our PB filesystems, etc.

It's always worth emailing us.

~~~
hemancuso
Curious if the multi-pb accounts are in a single flat namespace. Or even the
same filesystem... 1PB of ZFS seems scary

~~~
toomuchtodo
> 1PB of ZFS seems scary

Why so?

~~~
hemancuso
I meant in one filesystem. No obvious way to construct a single zpool anywhere
near that big.

And if not one filesystem, curious how it would work in practice.

~~~
rsync
We currently allow 1.1 PB in a single "namespace" (zpool).

There are non-obvious ways to make a petabyte-sized zpool non-scary ... but
even with those employed we still utilize raidz3 and have contingencies for
rollbacks.

edit: for obvious reasons, that 1.1 PB number will grow by 50% in the very
near future...

~~~
hemancuso
It's easy enough to jam enough disks into a rack with these 90disk 4u super
micro jbods. The thing that always scared me (ESP with rsync) is how do you
get performant metadata for a few billion files? Or even tens of millions.

And raidz3 resilver must be horrible at those densities!

Again. Just curious. Email at jmancuso@expandrive if you feel like chatting. I
know we offer a similar product, but we are about to leave zfs for the above
concerns. Wouldn't mind sending some business your way.

~~~
jacquesct
Any hints at what filesystem you are moving Strongspace over to? Assuming that
you will be moving off SmartOS as well?

~~~
hemancuso
Distributed object storage

Filesystem: ExpanDrive :)

------
spindritf
A comment on the site points it out already but they charge European users
more now (€9.99 which is $13.17 currently). Is there an external reason?

Does that include VAT? Did they get a datacentre somewhere in the EU?

~~~
jrnkntl
Yeah, what's up with that? Apple-esque practices for digital goods. I just
used a VPN to purchase the $ plan instead.

~~~
petercooper
If you bought it personally (i.e. a B2C sale) you should be fine, but as a
warning for any _(update: UK based, at least)_ VAT-registered traders or
businesses, you will need to reverse charge the VAT which mostly defeats the
point.

~~~
jrnkntl
You don't need to reverse charge the VAT as a EU business because there's no
VAT stated on the invoice at all (b/c it's a US company).

[edited] this is bullocks, IANAA(ccountant) applies here deservedly.

~~~
petercooper
Maybe VAT law is different in your country but that is not true in the UK
where reverse charging of VAT is required on services where the supplier is
"outside the UK" (including outside the EU). Indeed, HMRC's guidance on this
includes an example of a US-based Web hosting company providing hosting to a
UK business:
[http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vatpossmanual/vatposs14300.ht...](http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vatpossmanual/vatposs14300.htm)

HMRC do note that _" the UK applies the reverse charge provisions more widely
than elsewhere in the EU"_, however, and for this I get the joy of having to
reverse charge about 50 invoices a quarter for US services (all our hosting,
SaaS bills, etc) ;-) For example, if a host in the US bills us $100, we then
have to reverse charge $20 converted into GBP at approved rates, then claim
the equivalent back.. so the net position is zero but it has to be accounted
for (holds head in hands and rocks back and forth).

------
rogerbinns
Dropbox having good Linux support is a big reason I use them personally and
professionally (both paid).

But geez do they mess other things up. For example you can only share top
level folders. We have to share with various outside parties and that
limitation leads to a very cluttered file structure.

The solution for multiple accounts is beyond annoying. The correct way of
doing it how google does it - you provide however many sets of credentials and
can then easily select the current set to use/view. Dropbox do this idiotic
thing where you tie your personal one into a business one, then logging into
the latter also logs you into the former and everything works as though it is
one account, with enforced folder names. I'm sure there is some weak
justification about how this prevents issues with free accounts, but making
paying users have a horrible time isn't the way to achieve that.

~~~
nacs
> Dropbox having good Linux support is a big reason I use them personally

AeroFS (what I use), Bittorrent Sync and Syncthing (Golang, OSS) all support
Linux (and Mac/Win) and are good alternatives.

~~~
rogerbinns
While they all have desirable attributes, especially for individual usage,
they are harder to cooperate with others. (By that I mean try to get friends
and relatives to use them with you, when those folk aren't tech savvy and
certainly don't have their own storage.)

------
anu_gupta
More granular permissioning, and an increase in space to 1TB. Not bad.

------
jkmcf
The biggest benefit of Dropbox is the mobile app client support. On iOS, you
see Dropbox and iCloud support, but rarely anything else.

When other sync services like Box and friends get more integration, I’ll
gladly switch away since I would love some sort of encryption, which Dropbox,
and Evernote damn you, appear unable or unwilling to implement.

------
f3llowtraveler
All that matters: Does Dropbox encrypt my data on the client side, before
storing it on the server?

Or does Dropbox have the power to pilfer through my data, along with official
snoopers and hackers?

~~~
chmars
No, Dropbox does NOT encrypt your data on the client site.

Alternatives would be Spideroak and Wuala or addon software like Boxcryptor.
They work but not as flawlessly and user-friendly as Dropbox usually does …

~~~
StavrosK
I've found EncFS over Dropbox to be pretty good, retaining the best of both
worlds.

~~~
AlyssaRowan
Please be cautious: EncFS was _not_ designed to resist an attacker having
ongoing access to the volume, as they would in this scenario!

In particular, an attacker having access to the ciphertext at two or more
different times violates EncFS's security assumptions; undetected malicious
modification of files is also feasible in this scenario.

Many encrypted filesystems do not include such a property in their design
criteria - for example, XTS mode as-is is not suitable for use in this
scenario either, so please also try to avoid putting TrueCrypt (et al) on
Dropbox!

For a broad general example of what a system would look like which tries to
address this use case more naturally and effectively (although, caveat: I have
not reviewed it in great detail myself), please see Tahoe-LAFS.

~~~
namityadav
I've been using Dropbox with EncFS, and I feel foolish about not thinking of
the fact that Dropbox has ongoing access to the encrypted files.

Would you recommend something other than Dropbox + EncFS as the best
compromise for a file-sync solution that has reasonable security, a non-buggy
client, supports block-level sync, is reasonably priced and "just works"?
BitTorrent Sync + EncFS?

------
PankajGhosh
I do not have a need of 1TB of space, just 100GB would do. It would be great
if they provided a tier of 100GB plan (just like Google Drive)

~~~
zzleeper
No one (almost) needs 1TB... the way they can afford it is they expect most
people to use at most a few hundred GB, but with the peace of mind that they
could store more

~~~
rikkus
Personal photos and videos I don't want to lose, which are of course backed up
to actual backup systems, but I also want access to wherever I am. That's what
I need 1TB for.

------
fit2rule
I wish OS vendors weren't asleep at the wheel. This sort of service needs to
be integrated into the OS. I'm sick of having an OS that doesn't include next-
generation features like seamless p2p filesharing. I guess its time to make
one ..

~~~
cbhl
You mean like Windows 8 and OneDrive? Or OS X and iCloud? Or Ubuntu and Ubuntu
One(now discontinued)?

~~~
fit2rule
These are just backup services between Microsft/Apple/Ubuntu, Inc., and the
users.

What I want is true p2p. Like, nobody in between necessary, because the OS has
everything onboard to make it happen. That sort of 'asleep at the wheel'..

------
kakashi19
EncFS over Dropbox works best for me: [http://ninjatips.com/encrypt-dropbox-
using-encfs/](http://ninjatips.com/encrypt-dropbox-using-encfs/)

------
raymondh
It is unclear whether the packrat add-on for unlimited versioning is still
available for Dropbox Pro.

~~~
Styrke
I think it is only available if you were already signed up for it. I just
chose to continue with the packrat add-on for my pro account. It seems like
the alternative they are now offering is only extended version history. (which
would save changes for a year)

------
projectileboy
So I have the $20/month a plan, and my reward appears to be that I pay twice
as much and still have 200GB...? Do I have to cancel and re-subscribe? Anyone
from Dropbox out there..???

~~~
ayrx
> Already a Pro user? Dropbox will update automatically in the next couple
> days. You don’t have to do a thing.

Looks like you just have to wait a few days.

~~~
nroach
Plus, if you're on a larger plan the upgrade is to 10x your current space. So
2TB.

------
hackpm
[http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Dropbox-slash-its-
price-99-yr-f...](http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Dropbox-slash-its-price-99-yr-
for-1TB-Aug-2014)

------
of
Whoever downvoted my previous comment, can you explain to me why you care
about Dropbox Pro?

~~~
s3r3nity
I didn't downvote, but it wasn't a productive comment -- it was just snarky
and condescending.

I don't think this is front-page worthy of HN, sure, but anytime someone at
Google/Dropbox/Apple does so much as pass gas, people around here get excited.

~~~
kenny_r
Helping Dropbox grow is arguably the single greatest achievement of YC to
date. I think in that light it makes sense that news about Dropbox gets on the
front page of news.ycombinator.com.

~~~
of
I would "argue" that fact, given the chance.

------
chaostheory
Was privacy ever a feature? Will it ever become a Dropbox feature or is it
impossible due to either today's political climate or Dropbox's internal views
on the matter?

------
Artemis2
A quick reminder of the practices of Dr. Rice, member of Dropbox's Board of
directors: [http://drop-dropbox.com](http://drop-dropbox.com).

------
Rainymood
I feel like I missed out on something major reading these comments.

What have I missed in the last 6 months concerning db and Condoleezza Rice?

------
of
lol who cares?

~~~
__xtrimsky
I do care about dropbox, it's the only cloud system that works well on linux
systems . It used to be overpriced but now the pricing is good. Also Google
Drive is terrible on Windows if like me you have a lot of files. One drive is
limited to 2GB of file size.

I have yet to find a great alternative to it.

~~~
CalRobert
Owncloud is great, and avoids the moral complexities of contributing to a
board that includes at least one endorser of torture and warrantless
surveillance.

~~~
chmars
… if you have the knowledge, money and time to manage your Owncloud server in
a secure way. Since such configuration includes a more advanced firewall, most
users will not have the necessary skills I am afraid …

Focused on Owncloud only, the latest version is indeed great! :)

------
jingo
I've got something I like better than Dropbox. It's called rdiff.

It does one thing only: deduplication.

All the other stuff needed for remote, incremental backups, e.g., moving files
back and forth over a network, can be done with other open source tools. I
think I have a pretty good command of moving files around with open source
software... I do not need a third party to help me via an obfuscated blob of
Python and who knows what else.

I like having control over my backups versus trusting it all to some closed-
source, third party, "all-in-one" application.

In my mind having control and transparency will always be more powerful than
handing over my data deduplication and backup to a third party, such as
"Dropbox".

But I imagine there are few others who would agree. Forgive me for not loving
Dropbox. Maybe some day I will see the light.

~~~
mikeash
How do I set up these tools to automatically sync a set of files between
multiple computers and make them accessible from my smartphone and tablet?

~~~
ewzimm
It's been mentioned in a few other comments, but ownCloud does all that.

[https://owncloud.org/](https://owncloud.org/)

You don't even need to set it up yourself:

[https://owncloud.org/providers/](https://owncloud.org/providers/)

~~~
mikeash
Thanks for the pointer. I'd heard about that before but never really checked
it out. Looks pretty straightforward.

~~~
thmorton
If you don't mind hosting yourself, Seafile is also open source and has really
nice Mac/Windows/Linux/Android/iOS client apps. It also does delta syncs,
which I don't believe ownCloud supports yet:

[http://seafile.com/en/download/](http://seafile.com/en/download/)
[http://manual.seafile.com/](http://manual.seafile.com/)

~~~
mikeash
Thanks, that sounds even better.

What's with the lack of delta syncs in all these systems? As far as I know,
neither Google Drive nor OneDrive do it. Now you're saying ownCloud doesn't do
it either. I didn't even think to look at it for oneCloud because _obviously_
they'd support it.

I consider it to be an essential feature, to the point that I won't bother
with something that doesn't support it. I guess I'm unusual in that respect.

~~~
jingo
I suspected I would get downvoted for not loving Dropbox. And I was right.
Interesting.

FYI

rdiff is the reference implementation or first example of a utility written
with librsync, which is the library that Dropbox used to build their
"business".

Usage: rdiff [OPTIONS] signature [BASIS [SIGNATURE]] [OPTIONS] delta SIGNATURE
[NEWFILE [DELTA]] [OPTIONS] patch BASIS [DELTA [NEWFILE]]

Options: -v, --verbose Trace internal processing -V, --version Show program
version -?, --help Show this help message -s, --statistics Show performance
statistics Delta-encoding options: -b, --block-size=BYTES Signature block size
-S, --sum-size=BYTES Set signature strength \--paranoia Verify all rolling
checksums IO options: -I, --input-size=BYTES Input buffer size -O, --output-
size=BYTES Output buffer size -z, --gzip[=LEVEL] gzip-compress deltas -i,
--bzip2[=LEVEL] bzip2-compress deltas

~~~
mikeash
What's the relevance of this reply to the preceding comment thread?

