My public links are no longer working

malphadour
New member | Level 2
9 years ago
This is the ONLY thing we use dropbox for and you [content removed by moderator] have broken it! Dropbox allowed us to simply share files with customers and now you have made that into an absolute mess, not to mention the fact that the existing 40 odd links I have set up in numerous emails are now all broken. I'm not quite sure how Dropbox think that pissing off its customer base is going to create more business. We will not be paying you a penny until the direct link functionality is returned!!!
- Rich
  Super User II
  9 years ago
  malphadour wrote:
  
  Dropbox allowed us to simply share files with customers
  
  And you still can, using a Share Link, which replaced the Public folder functionality in 2012.
  
  We will not be paying you a penny until the direct link functionality is returned!!!
  
  The ability to directly link to a file was not removed. You can do that with a Share Link buy simply changing the parameter at the end of the link.
  - Romout-GL
    New member | Level 2
    9 years ago
    Why you did it? It was so usefull to share some pic., videos, pdf, and other file in such simple way (public link). Why do we need all this dl=0/1 and raw=1 now? Will the public link a commersial option now, or what?
eskdale
New member | Level 2
9 years ago
The link still shows 404 for me.

I've checked my spam box and emails and that my email address is correct but did not receive any notification about this.

I only discovered when I asked someone to go to a link I had published if they needed help and they told me it didn't work.

Personally it is a great inconvenience and yet another reason not to stay with or recommend Dropbox. Any links I've supplied to small programs to help people out now longer work. Thank you Dropbox. Luckily I've just bought a QNAP NAS box which allows me to do this.

But WHY Dropbox - OK it stops people using your service which I appreciate someone has to pay for the bandwidth. So may be make it chargable but don't just withdraw it without notification. I assume also if you change a file now to a newer version the link will change which it didn't previously. Sorry but it seems a wrong move to me unless you are trying to get rid of customers.
- Mark
  Super User II
  9 years ago
  They HAVE told lots of people though - in fact everybody via email.
  
  And this is only affecting (at present) people who do not pay for the services they use. So, not using it is possibly what they want? After all it reduces their cost base.
  - eskdale
    New member | Level 2
    9 years ago
    I'm pretty good a reading email notifications and I have a personal dropbox account and also a works dropbox account. I've not received notifications from either (I've double checked). I also checked my Spambox for emails from Dropbox and nothing in the last month. My email address is also correct. A present it is only affecting the free service but is it also going to affecting the paid service shortly. They did that with HTML rendering.
    
    Not using is a way of reducing thier costs. But why spend all that money advertising and developing a user base then push them all away. Surely it would be better to just charge for the service, rather than just annoy potential paying customers.
- Matthew T.27
  Collaborator | Level 8
  9 years ago
  Has anyone here had any success with service that move files between cloud services? I'm planning my move away from Dropbox when they kill the public folder for paid users.
  
  I've got a few hundred gigs to move. I suppose I could sync them all to my computer and reupload but it's just a pain.
  - Rich
    Super User II
    9 years ago
    Matthew T.27 wrote:
    My error for thinking a file hosting service could be used for, ya know, hosting files
    
    Your error for thinking Dropbox is a file hosting service. It's a file synchronization service with sharing capabilities. It has never advertised itself as a hosting service.
    
    Take a shot...
    
    Has anyone here had any success with service that move files between cloud services?
    
    I've heard decent things about both Mover.io and MultCloud, but have never used them personally.