Dropbox Passwords discontinuation

https://help.dropbox.com/en-us/installs/dropbox-passwords-discontinuation

by h1fra • 12 months ago

85 77 12 months ago

help.dropbox.com

treetalker• 12 months ago

I kinda wish Dropbox would stick to dropboxing.

Always with the product-line creep. No doubt the next offerings will be Dropbox Email and "Dropbox the LLM" (better than Spaceballs the Flamethrower, I suppose).

rjh293• 12 months ago

I agree but what are they supposed to do? Cloud sharing is commoditized now and it's easy to move providers. Their only choice was to try to move up the stack, but there is no clear direction. It's video editing, e-signatures/encryption, passwords, AI, document editing... so far I haven't found any of those offerings useful. Their Linux support is however much appreciated.

emeril• 12 months ago

I suppose though to be honest, it seems they are still the best for cloud sharing I think?

Groxx2• 12 months ago

Reduce price. Reduce the abominable resource usage. Allow E2E encryption. Increase performance so it doesn't trickle at tens of kilobytes for hours when I have 100Mbps upload and half a terabyte left.

Like. Build a decent product. The lack of any major competition doesn't mean they should stop improving and branch out into costly absurdity, at least try to keep up with Maestral with 100x the headcount.

bigstrat2003• 12 months ago

Well... they could have not enabled a "share your data with us" checkbox without ever asking the user. I have no idea how many customers they lost by playing fast and loose with privacy (I, at least, was one), but it doesn't seem like it could've been worth it.

slyall• 12 months ago

Is cloud sharing really commoditized ?

How many other options are they to sync files between my laptop and my phone, especially if my Laptop is running Linux?

geoffpado• 12 months ago

Dropbox Email

Been there, done that: https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873268/why-dropbox-mailb...

bobbylarrybobby• 12 months ago

This was a client, whereas I assume “dropbox email” was intended to mean a gmail competitor.

coro_1• 12 months ago

There are 5 steps for every one 1 there once was for any given operation on the platform. The next offering will be 6 steps.

bapak2• 12 months ago

You could say Google should have stuck to search, Apple to computers, IBM to punching cards. As companies grow, they want to diversify and not die.

hn8726• 12 months ago

Dropbox "ai" already exists too: https://dash.dropbox.com/

stmw2• 12 months ago

Strategically this doesn't make a lot of sense to me (password management is a natural adjacent product to their core offering), but I am sure they had lots of data that showed it wasn't succeeding. Having been involved in password managemetn before, what I have learned is that it is surprisingly difficult to continue to maintain as both browsers and websites change, the mobile situation is very difficult and it's just one of those software projects that seems simple.. but isn't. So if there is not a big attach rate, it makes sense for Dropbox to drop it.

dehrmann• 12 months ago

I assume consumers have moved to Google for files and still reuse passwords or use their browser's password manager. Companies have moved passwords to something like Okta, and probably Microsoft, Google, or possibly Box for files.

microtonal2• 12 months ago

Even as a Dropbox user, I only half-knew that they had a password manager. I try to avoid their website because it tries to push me into a different plan every single time with popups, banners, etc. (despite being on a $20 per month family account).

On the Mac, I avoid their own client and use Maestral for pretty much the same reasons. Unlike their old client, their Mac client annoys you with all kinds of (to me) irrelevant stuff. Only on Linux I use their client, because it's still the old client and does not bother me.

I guess a lot of people that are still using and paying for Dropbox, do it because of their really excellent file sync and try to tune out of anything else because they tried to push too much crap over the years (remember when they tried to push everyone to use their mail client?).

I would rather have them bring things like end-to-end encryption to all account types. Improve the functionality of the core product we are paying them for.

AznHisoka• 12 months ago

What is the biggest thing to maintain? Isn’t it just storing passwords?

thimabi• 12 months ago

Integration with browsers and websites, because these password managers are based on autofill rather than copying and pasting passwords.

stmw2• 12 months ago

Integration and endless QA with the websites for form-filling, and various tricky user flows with sync across desktop and mobile.

rjh293• 12 months ago

Google are known for cancelling products but you can at least be sure your files, passwords, bookmarks, map pins, and e-mails aren't going away. They have a core set of apps they've maintained for over two decades without pulling the rug out from under them.

mantra2• 12 months ago

I always figure with Google as long as the products are part of the core Apps/G-Suite/Workspace offering they’re fairly safe to use and anything else is a coin flip.

Lammy• 12 months ago

s/fr-fr/en-us/ https://help.dropbox.com/en-us/installs/dropbox-passwords-di...

tomhow• 12 months ago

Updated, thanks!

h1fra• 12 months ago

thanks, didn't realize I shared the French one

tiffanyh• 12 months ago

Not knowing that Dropbox offered a password manager … I misinterpreted the headline to mean I could no longer log into my Dropbox account with a password anymore (and thought they were forcing passkeys).

greyface-• 12 months ago

For me, the headline evoked memories of this 2011 Dropbox security incident. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2678576

sodality2• 12 months ago

Hilarious that the bitrotted dropbox blogpost linked in the techcrunch article discussing this vulnerability (quoted as saying things like “this never should have happened”) instead redirects to some dropbox blog home page, with “What happens when AI joins your team?” prominently featured. Initially I thought their postmortem was blaming AI very openly 14 years ago :D

brundolf• 12 months ago

Same

alisonatwork3• 12 months ago

This recently happened to me on Booking.com and... I ended up not using Booking.com to book a hotel. So long, genius status, or whatever.

It absolutely drives me nuts that the western world is moving to "as seen in China" login-via-callback flow. Aside from the privacy issue of forcing people to attach an email or phone number or third-party auth provider to their every account, it's just a waste of time and energy to delete our passwords and force us through this weird multi-app flow just to log in to a service we spent years logging into without ever getting hacked. Imagine if every time you wanted to get into your house you had to press the doorbell and then wait for someone to call you back to decide whether you should be allowed in. It's absurd.

ijustlovemath• 12 months ago

This is especially true if you simply increase the minimum password length to a certain amount. The major browsers include password managers for specifically this purpose which can generate passwords; why don't we move towards educating users how to use these tools instead of centralizing all the failure points of the web?

And yes, I understand the major conflict of interest in saving important passwords to Google, which I personally don't do and wouldn't recommend, but I think if they're interested in staying out of the Googleverse, we can also tell people about the good paid alternatives out there.

hug• 12 months ago

Imagine if every time you wanted to get into your house you had to press the doorbell and then wait for someone to call you back to decide whether you should be allowed in.

This is exactly what I do to visitors to my house.

bapak2• 12 months ago

All bets are on Passkeys, but I'm sure a lot of people can't deal with them due to lack of sync across devices.

Passkeys are a great Trojan horse for password managers vs oauth, magic links, "password123" strings

rafram3• 12 months ago

"as seen in China" login-via-callback flow

What, exactly, does this mean?

But passkeys are the new hotness, not SSO, and what you’re describing is SSO. Passkeys aren’t tied to an outside account, just a password manager (which can be your browser - no account required).

sofixa2• 12 months ago

What? You can auth to booking.com with a password just fine (I just did it this morning).

Many sites have "magic links" (they sent you a link to login via email instead of having to write a in password), but there's almost always a way to say you want to log in with your password. Sometimes, especially for touchier things, there's MFA.

Aside from the privacy issue of forcing people to attach an email or phone number or third-party auth provider to their every account

How do you login without an email, phone number or delegating to a third party? You perform a secret magic dance? Especially for something such as booking.com which more likely than not has your bank details saved, and can wreak havoc (cancel your bookings), I'm really not sure what you want them to do.

windexh8er• 12 months ago

I was wondering, genuinely: is Dropbox still something the masses use? I found the product to be subpar many years ago and stopped using it and only seemed to read about it continuing to degrade.

chromehearts• 12 months ago

I always wondered this too .. I have a feeling their only users are those who just never migrated & users who used 10minmail (who upload "illegal" files (unreleased songs etc.))

omnimus3• 12 months ago

At least in some circles yes. It is very much only sync service creative professionals use.

Mainly due to conflict resolution, corruption and version history. It still has best implemented “online only files”.

Think 10 person design studio all working in one big studio “Work” folder.

So while the clients got bloated Dropbox still has edge in essentials. People trust it unlike other services some of which are straight up infamous for loosing your files like iCloud or corrupting them like adobe creative cloud.

tim333• 12 months ago

I, speaking as part of the masses, still use it. Works fine for my purposes. I'm not sure what's supposed to be wrong with it?

relyks• 12 months ago

This stinks. I use this as my main password manager :(

ildon• 12 months ago

This is very sad news. I've been using their password manager since it came out and, although not perfect, was working very well for me.

As a long standing (paying) user of Dropbox (I believe I've been using it since the very beginning), and former stock holder, I believe Dropbox must adjust its course asap. They lack a clear vision for the future and their current offering is way too limited (and shrinking apparently). For the money they ask there's no point in actually paying for their product, unless one is already locked in. For the same price, or even less, one can get an entire Office suite (Google/MS), plus cloud storage. Sure, Google Drive or OneDrive are nowhere close to Dropbox in terms of sync quality, but how many users (business and consumers) are willing to pay such a premium for quality file sync on top of other subscriptions?

Additionally, for many Dropbox is a no go for the simple fact that they don't have a reliable way to edit documents simultaneously. Recently I was looking for a cloud storage solution for a business that needed collaborative editing of documents. I had to go with Office365, as much as I would have preferred not to, because the way they allow multiple concurrent edits to documents is simply not matched by Dropbox (Google Drive is even better but it lacked some features that were essential for the business).

Unfortunately it looks like the stock market is well aware of this. The capitalization of Dropbox has been essentially stagnating for ~5 years, if adjusted for inflation.

I really hope that Dropbox can change its course by doing some brave acquisitions and rebuild its brand image with a more compelling and comprehensive offering.

kookamamie• 12 months ago

sync quality

Is this really a differentiator nowadays?

SebastianKra• 12 months ago

iCloud lost all my data twice. Before that, it was always stuck syncing some unknown files. I also ran into problems where conflict resolution in Apples own office apps wouldn't work and I'd just lose one of the version. So yes.

antonyh4• 12 months ago

Both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive have had mass file loss events. Local LAN sync is hugely useful too. Upload speed matters, as does conflict resolution. These are features worth paying for.

sofixa2• 12 months ago

They're a perfect example of why the old adage of "do one thing and do it well" often doesn't scale as a business.

If platforms can provide a competing service, bundled within their package, many will pick it, even if it is worse quality. Dropbox had to expand (like Proton are - they started with email, then added calendar, Drive for file storage, Docs for collaborative editing, Pass for password manager, etc. Even if I would prefer they spend more time to fix gaps in their Android email app, I completely understand why they have to expand their stack).

chii• 12 months ago

bundled within their package

some might even call this anti-competitive practice!

qnleigh• 12 months ago

3 months doesn't seem like enough advanced warning before deleting essential data like this. What if someone is hiking the Pacific Coast Trail right now? Or is the recovering from a serious medical event? Or just doesn't use the app and the email they signed up with that often?

Is it really that expensive for them to maintain minimal access for a year? This is not a rhetorical question.

joey486DX4• 12 months ago

Surprised they wouldn't just recommend KeePassXC with the database saved in the Dropbox folder. I've done this since the inception of Dropbox.

sitzkrieg• 12 months ago

companies aquiring/integrating/developing password managers has been the biggest red flag ever

Dropbox Passwords discontinuation

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