That is what a report on Hacker News claims. In short, the report claims that Dropbox on the Mac platform appears in the Security & Privacy tab for Accessibility, despite the fact that users are never prompted to grant access to the features. Here’s a video that demonstrates this in action:
I tried this on my Mac and I was able to replicate this behavior….. And I am not amused. Dropbox clearly is feeling the heat as they responded to this on Hacker News, in short saying that it only asks for the permissions it needs and uses the Accessibility features for certain app integrations like Office, although the permissions aren’t as “granular” as the company would like.
My $0.02 worth? Like I said, I am not amused by this behavior. Given that this is the same company behind Project Infinite which some people say would open up your computer to getting pwned on a massive scale, not to mention that the company was the victim of a massive hack of over 60 million Dropbox accounts back in 2012 which required the company to force a password reset, I really don’t think that anyone should give the company a free pass on this issue. There are lots of apps on the Mac platform that want permissions like these, but they ask for them as opposed to just doing whatever it pleases. It also begs the question as to what it does on other operating systems, like Windows for example.
Now if you excuse me, I’m going to remove Dropbox from my Mac as I don’t like having security risks on computers that I rely upon.
UPDATE: I’ve gone one step further and deleted my Dropbox, effectively closing my account. The more I thought about it, the more that this is a security risk that I want no part of. It’s not just the fact that Dropbox asks for permissions on your Mac without user intervention, it’s is the fact that some evil doer could leverage that to do something really bad. That’s a chance that I will not take.
This entry was posted on September 12, 2016 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Dropbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Does Dropbox Pose A Security Risk?
That is what a report on Hacker News claims. In short, the report claims that Dropbox on the Mac platform appears in the Security & Privacy tab for Accessibility, despite the fact that users are never prompted to grant access to the features. Here’s a video that demonstrates this in action:
I tried this on my Mac and I was able to replicate this behavior….. And I am not amused. Dropbox clearly is feeling the heat as they responded to this on Hacker News, in short saying that it only asks for the permissions it needs and uses the Accessibility features for certain app integrations like Office, although the permissions aren’t as “granular” as the company would like.
My $0.02 worth? Like I said, I am not amused by this behavior. Given that this is the same company behind Project Infinite which some people say would open up your computer to getting pwned on a massive scale, not to mention that the company was the victim of a massive hack of over 60 million Dropbox accounts back in 2012 which required the company to force a password reset, I really don’t think that anyone should give the company a free pass on this issue. There are lots of apps on the Mac platform that want permissions like these, but they ask for them as opposed to just doing whatever it pleases. It also begs the question as to what it does on other operating systems, like Windows for example.
Now if you excuse me, I’m going to remove Dropbox from my Mac as I don’t like having security risks on computers that I rely upon.
UPDATE: I’ve gone one step further and deleted my Dropbox, effectively closing my account. The more I thought about it, the more that this is a security risk that I want no part of. It’s not just the fact that Dropbox asks for permissions on your Mac without user intervention, it’s is the fact that some evil doer could leverage that to do something really bad. That’s a chance that I will not take.
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This entry was posted on September 12, 2016 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Dropbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.