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

[Jay]

Hi @Threlly, @GlynH, and everyone else in this thread, thanks for your patience.

Our dev team have informed us that they use telemetry.dropbox.com as a channel to receive client side logging, error reporting, and other metrics. This is listed as a trusted domain since the primary domain itself is 'dropbox.com'.

The Pi-Hole add-on marks ‘error reporting domains’ which is what we are gathering through that web path.
 

I hope this information helps to clarify matters. 

[Threlly]

Hi Jay,

I thought I’d turned that off, nor do I want to share information that I have no control over.
How do I turn this off ?
Who is this information (in any form) shared with ?

Thanks,
Gary

[Jay]

Hi @Threlly, currently, it isn't possible to disable this via the Dropbox desktop application.

The information would be sent to the dev team, to further improve the Dropbox desktop application.

[Threlly]

Hi Jay,

Well that’s me out.
It’s constant and I have no control of data being sent from MY machine, especially when I have purposefully clicked the option that turned that off.
So it turns out that we have all been deceived.
If I want that turned off, that’s it. Period.
I’ll migrate my data to another service.

Please note: I must also refer this to European GDPR, as Dropbox are clearly not compliant.

Thank you all for your patience and help.

Kind regards,
Gary

[medall12]

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.  

[doni]

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!

[thisIsBad]

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. 

[eagerish_nuthatch]

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:

[Jay]

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. 

[Threlly]

Hi Jay.

Thank you.
How do we opt out ?

Best,
Gary