Dropbox with new terms and privacy rules
Posted: 01 Mar 2014, 18:54
I got a mail from dropbox today:
These terms are always manufactured to cover the back - What is new here is the arbitration clause.
Arbitration is a way of settling disputes out of court - a kind of private judge judy (only there are no judges only experts from the business maybe colleges or competitors of Dropbox).
And they basically say "you win" and "you lose" and that is it - the matter is settled.
This is cheaper and faster than waiting for the courts.
So Dropbox wants you to accept that up front so that you are cut of from going to court in the future.
So is this a good idea?
How do we now that Dropbox not already has compromised our data so heavily that they simply are running this as a "cut losses" strategy?
Maybe they already know that they never could win class action lawsuits?
What if they have given away the data of all European (you know foreigners) users to the NSA - how would they stand against an European lawsuit?
It makes sense for the business - it is their job to reduce risk. It is not obvious that it makes sense for Dropbox users.
The Dropbox terms are governed by California law .
As it looks it could not hurt to opt out of this which you can do
here
(I have done it. It has no negative effects and it is easily done.)
It is a common way of settling things between business "partners" though.
It is also possible to cancel your account and Dropbox will delete all your data according to the terms - that is a good thing.
I can tell you that it was almost impossible to cancel Facebook even if I had not completed the registration - I broke off when I came to the terms.
More here
These terms are always manufactured to cover the back - What is new here is the arbitration clause.
Arbitration is a way of settling disputes out of court - a kind of private judge judy (only there are no judges only experts from the business maybe colleges or competitors of Dropbox).
And they basically say "you win" and "you lose" and that is it - the matter is settled.
This is cheaper and faster than waiting for the courts.
So Dropbox wants you to accept that up front so that you are cut of from going to court in the future.
So is this a good idea?
How do we now that Dropbox not already has compromised our data so heavily that they simply are running this as a "cut losses" strategy?
Maybe they already know that they never could win class action lawsuits?
What if they have given away the data of all European (you know foreigners) users to the NSA - how would they stand against an European lawsuit?
It makes sense for the business - it is their job to reduce risk. It is not obvious that it makes sense for Dropbox users.
The Dropbox terms are governed by California law .
As it looks it could not hurt to opt out of this which you can do
here
(I have done it. It has no negative effects and it is easily done.)
It is a common way of settling things between business "partners" though.
It is also possible to cancel your account and Dropbox will delete all your data according to the terms - that is a good thing.
I can tell you that it was almost impossible to cancel Facebook even if I had not completed the registration - I broke off when I came to the terms.
More here