Why So Much Telemetry ?

[Threlly]

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

[Walter]

Thanks for the nudge on this one, Gary.

I've sent you a ticket to the email address that's associated with your Community's profile so we can investigate further.

Whenever you get the chance, please take a look at your inbox and we'll take it from there.

[GlynH]

I'd like to know the answer/outcome to this as well.

I installed Pi-hole less than 3 hours ago and so far 208 blocked calls to telemetry.dropbox.com and a further 10 entries since I started this email!

It's a bit worrying when it doesn't appear in your own list of recognised domains and you don't seem to know what it is...

Thanks & kind regards,

-=Glyn=-

[JingleDjango]

I'm following this thread with interest.

[edie828]

I read the "fix" script.  No way am I equipped to figure this out.  Is there a plain English version that I can access?  My business is being severely affected by what I think this problem is.

When I try to download the attachment to the dropbox using the chrome extension (in ANY of my gmail accounts), nothing happens.  Everything was seamless and problem-free until a few days ago.

[Walter]

Hi there @edie828; thanks for joining our discussion here.

May I ask which exact version of Chrome are you noticing this on and if it persists after clearing your browser's cache? 

Thanks!

[edie828]

Version 85.0.4183.121 (Official Build) (64-bit)

[Lusil]

Hey peeps, thanks for your additional reports. 

If you haven't already, could you submit a ticket to our team from this link, so that they can look into this with you?

If you have any trouble creating a ticket, just give us another nudge and we'll be more than happy to send you one. 

Keep us posted!

[Threlly]

Hi,

Curious that this cannot be identified quickly.

The url and IP address belong to Dropbox.

The internal applications & security team should be able to say exactly what this telemetry is as a matter of routine.

Quite alarming that dropbox are not aware of what their own net facing interfaces are doing.

I don't need to remind anybody that this is essentially a matter of trust.

Best,

Gary

[GlynH]

Yeah I'm really concerned about this also. Seems like a deliberate attempt to ignore what I believe to be a fair & reasonable question.

For those who may be interested Pi-hole reports;

Top Blocked Domains

telemetry.dropbox.com 1958

It's currently #2 in the list after Amazon which is nothing to be proud about IMHO! 🙂

Bearing in mind I have not used Dropbox nor rebooted any machine it is installed on I find the amount of hits very concerning.

Should I just add it to my Blacklist? WIll this have any effect on Dropbox?

Can someone from Dropbox please step up, take ownership and at least have the common courtesy & professional integrity to reply rather than ignore please?

Thanks & kind regards,

-=Glyn=-

[GlynH]

And in just a day the queries to the super-secret-squirrel-site has now surpassed that of Amazon!

Top Blocked Domains

Domain Hits Frequency

telemetry.dropbox.com 2694
device-metrics-us.amazon.com 2617

If I hear nothing from Dropbox soon I'm going to consider it a bad actor and block it.

In fact I don't really use Dropbox much at all these days so I might just 'Drop' them altogether.

Such a pity I recently paid them $120 for another year...

-=Glyn=-