Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨💻? Find out how to check here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
Fake activity?
Yesterday I uploaded a movie file to Dropbox for some friends to download. Immediately after, I decided to check from a browser that wasn't logged in, to see what it would look like for them if they didn't have a Dropbox account. I was shocked to discover, under “Activity”: “Patricia Johnson downloaded this file” and “Anthony Abate viewed this file” (neither name recognised by me):
(Not logged in)
So, then I logged in to investigate, but only saw “Traffic and insights: See who’s visiting... Upgrade to Dropbox Professional to start tracking.”:
(Logged in)
Surely this isn’t a scare tactic to get me to upgrade to a paid account, is it??
Hi DoctorDada, thanks for joining the Community!
The image you saw in the first screenshot was an example of what file activity would look like if you were signed into your account.
It doesn't mean that those users were real or accessed the file.
Hope this helps to clarify matters!
12 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
This is surely the most stupid and utterly idiotic feature I have ever seen. I'm now having to look at moving all shared files out of Dropbox because I'm embarassed by my clients seeing that 'Patricia Johnson' and 'Anthony Abate' have also viewed the files even though they are spurious users who have been added by Dropbox to make it appear that Dropbox is going to tell everyone who looks at the files that they have looked at the files to anyone else who looks at the files even though I have taken time to ensure the settings do not allow this!!!
This makes it look like we are committing a personal security breach by using Dropbox even though we aren't.
Why do this?
What purpose can this serve Dropbox?
Horrible dark pattern that needs removing. It's not clear that this is an example of activity and serves only to upsell and create worry that uninvited guests are viewing files.
About View, download, and export
Need support with viewing, downloading, and exporting files and folders from your Dropbox account? Find help from the Dropbox Community.
