After Dropbox update it won't open on startup (Mac); asks me to go to dropboxer.net

Hi Dalbot, let's jump right into this! 

Have you tried all the available troubleshooting steps, mentioned throughout this thread? 

Do you also receive any error messages, or not at all?

Let me know!

Precisely the same is happening to me. I was just onto your online chat and people are not aware of this. It looks like a classic password-harvesting scam to me. But very troubling that it's happening and seems dropbox related. dropbxer.net is some form of shortened url

JG

if you hover over the dropboxer.net link you get a very strange email address "ice-sculpture-critique" with an @dropbox.com domian 

So i found an alias on my desktop to a font "calibri." This was being installed during bootup on my desk to

(never a good sign) it would suggest a script has been installed somewhere that on booting up adds this alias.

I used font book to delete the font

I deleted the alias

I rebooted and no strange message about dropbox not signing in etc.

Can we get a definitive answer as to what dropboxer.net is? It looks to be a domain owned by Dropbox but the email used for the google auth goes nowhere. 

This should be an easy answer. 

Yes, i agree, we also need some joined-up thinking as the online chat people don't know about this. I think there should be some flag at dropbox about this issue. It isnt isolated; several of us have exactly the same issue. If it is password harvesting then its quite a serious issue.

I found out one rather troubling thing. I noticed that two alais links had been saved to my desktop during my boot sequence (I could tell from the time stamping)

These were both aliases to a Calibri font file.

I deleted to font, and I deleted the alias and no more popups.

This could be some innocent piece of code the developers used during the testing of the masOS updates

It could be a piece of code that has been inadvertently added to the source code from an infected machine in the development chain

It could even be an internal issue at dropbox.

It needs a full investigation. Dropbox in particular needs to be super secure. I have some very sensitive financial files on mine. I cant be questioning the security.

JG

There is good reason to be on high alert after this occurred in the fall

Hi thedirector, and josephjpeters, thank you both for posting! 

You mentioned, that when you hover your mouse over dropboxer.net link you get a very strange email address, could you kindly send me some screenshots, please? 

Keep me posted!

Here's a screenshot. It appears "dropboxer.net" does appear in your GitHub in the dbx-career-framework

And Megan here's the same form my experience

Ugh. And Calibri is a standard Word font.

I'm no longer getting the dropboxer.net prompt; I get the two messages I put screenshots of originally. But then the dropbox works fine. The whole thing takes longer to start up which is a pain. This is on my desktop, not on my mac air, which seems fine.

Question: if I delete dropbox on my desktop, and try to re-install, would that help? and if so, how do I do it?

The instructions I had earlier were far too technical, and I did not know the terminology you were using. I'm not a technician . I want a simple, straightforward, foolproof way of getting rid of this irritating problem, and making sure my mac is a) safe and b) fully functional. Thanks!

So the font thing is a red herring. On boot up today i was back to the original problem

Dropbox can't start popup

continue or get help (help Pressed)

Google sign in webpage liked to dropperbox.net

Very annoying, dropbox all working as expected

Same issue here.

How come no one is answering the main question: chat is "dropboxer.net". 

WhoIs says it belongs to DropBox Inc. but it's not listed on the documentation page about official domains used by DropBox.

No one is addressing this issue, just radio silence both here and on support

I found traces of dropboxer.net on DropBox's GitHub here. Here's where:

Download the binder: wget --header "Cookie: sessionid=SESSION_ID" --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent -P raw --cut-dirs=3 https://app.dropboxer.net/binder/eng-career/

So it's related to their "Dropbox Engineering Career Framework" presented here.

Hence this is an internal system which should not be consumer-facing.

So the message we are seeing which links to dropboxer.net is clearly a bug.

I don't think it's dangerous though. I don't expect DropBox's internal career management to pose a malware threat.

Ironically enough, the person that could answer what this bug is about is the HR Manager at DropBox, not someone from support.

OK - but how do we do this? I'm trying to find anything about updating to the latest version, but am only getting links to upgrading my account. There's nothing the Mac app store that I can see either.

Plus: I've been reading people 's messages here about problems with syncing after they try to update the version.

FWIW: I have version 167.4.4719 and macOS Monterey 12.6.3.

What number is the new version of the app?

Hi ardmara, that should be the latest version of the app, if you're running the stable version and not the beta version.

OK, fine, but the problem has not been resolved. Emmet  announced that the issue was resolved. It is not.

I'm using the version I mentioned above.

I still am getting the same messages that I pasted in right at the top of this discussion when I start up. Start up is taking longer than it should. If I simply click 'ok' on the messages, rather than following links, the dropbox then works fine from the app in the dock, but does not appear on the top bar across the screen.

It's a pain, and means I have to be at my computer 10 minutes before I want to do anything.

 Emmet and Jay  I have just opened my desktop and got these two messages, as per usual. 

Could you click the blue link in the second image and then copy and paste the error log here to see what the issue could be related to?

Jay