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Why So Much Telemetry ?
Hi All,
My Pi Hole is blocking an INCREDIBLE amount of DropBox telemetry, even more than Windows telemetry, and by a large margin.
So I have a few questions.
1. What is this telemetry for ?
2. What information is in there ?
3. Who gets to see it (ie, is it shared in any way with, let's say, advertisers)
4. Why is it being blocked by my standard Pi Hole list, what threat could it be ?
5. Where do I turn it off if I wish to ?
Cheers,
Threlly
53 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
I'm not in the EU but I would like the option to opt out as well. In the meantime I'm blocking all traffic to to that domain using Little Snitch (macOS).
- This requires clarification by Dropbox.
Jay,
unfortunately I have to disagree with your statement "Using our Telemetry alias, we do not gather any data that is related to GDPR. The data gathered through this alias is user and device agnostic. This alias primarily reports error logs to our team to better improve our product." as long as you (Dropbox) don't publish which data is collected.
GDPR regulations are pretty restrictive and therefore companies should always treat any customer data they are collecting as sensitive personal information as long as not otherwise proven. According to GDPR you (Dropbox) have always to prove that this data is necessary to provide the offered service(s), data is necessary for legal purposes or that you have a legitimate interest (overruling the data ower's interests) to process any data owned by the customer (and even these telemetry data are owned by me, because they originate from my computers).
Collecting data for debugging purposes is OK, as long as it has been approved by the user. This could be simply achieved by an opt-in mechanism (for EU citizens). This would help you to cirumvent all of the GDPR hassle.
Cheers
Doni
Hi Jay,
By the way, I did not accept the post as a solution, that was a finger slip.
If you can revert please do so, if not I'll raise another post for the issue.
Cheers,
Gary
- Hi Jay.
Thank you.
How do we opt out ?
Best,
Gary - Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi everyone, I've checked again regarding your concerns and have the following information on the telemetry domain.
Using our Telemetry alias, we do not gather any data that is related to GDPR. The data gathered through this alias is user and device agnostic. This alias primarily reports error logs to our team to better improve our product.
Our privacy terms and conditions has more information on what and why we collect certain data. You can view that information on this page. Also discovering this thread while researching why my pi-hole is blocking such a lage amount of traffic for a service I pay for.
Hits in 24 Hours:
I followed this thread ever since I discovered the amount of data dropbox is siphoning under our nose.
It seems that you are right that this is no compiant of European GDPR. If Dropbox doesn't do something and earn back our trust, I see a class-action lawsuit coming their way.
Also fully agree w/ the other annotators. one callback per minute is way too much and not providing an option to turn off undocumented!!! telemetry is even worse. This is a 'good-bye trigger' for me. I also think this is not GDPR compliant. Dropboxers, your data protection seriousness is way too lazy!
I found this thread because my pihole is also blocking a CRAZY amount of telemetry.dropbox.com and I fully agree with Gary. We MUST have the option to share our information or not to share the information if that is what we choose. I am very dissapointed in these findings. I will also be looking in to another service to migrate to that is more transparent.
