Dear Dropbox: An open reply

Over the weekend, we received an email from Dropbox, imploring us to increase our use of the service:

Recently your Dropbox has been feeling kind of lonely

As a reminder, Dropbox lets you:

* Get to all your files from any computer or phone.
* Share documents, photos and entire folders easily.
* Restore your stuff in a snap even if your computer melts down.

If you need a refresher course, check out our tour.

We hope you come back to Dropbox!
- The Dropbox Team

How cute — even a smiley in there!

We thought about replying directly, and thought of removing ourselves from their mailing list, but in the end went for a third option: replying in public.

Dear Dropbox,

No. I will not “come back” to your service.

You might have noticed that I have never actually placed anything into my Dropbox. It was always a service that I used to receive data only. I was never sure, you see, what to make of you. Cloud computing makes me nervous, you see. It means that somebody else has my data.

I use the Internet quite a bit, but generally assume that everything I put online is public (with the exception of my credit card data, which I am often forced to take a risk with).

My lack of faith in cloud computing has recently been reinforced — by your own company. Not only did you lie about encryption and accessibility to your customers, but you make such basic security errors as forgetting to lock users’ accounts, thereby allowing anybody — anybody — to log onto them.

I’m not sure that there’s any information on my computer that people would want to steal. But if there were, I am confident that it could be stolen from your service. I do not think it would even take much in the way of expertise.

I am still waiting, patiently, for somebody to convince me that cloud computing with data that is personal and/or private is safe, secure and private. Rest assured that it will not be your company that convinces me. I am certainly not coming back – I was pretty much never actually there in the first place.

Kind Regards,
Mr. Topp

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