iOS 11 Dropbox app "Photos" tab can access entire account

[Neal M.4]

When using the iOS 11 Dropbox app "Photos" tab I've noticed it has access not just to the "Camera Uploads" folder but to my ENTIRE account; all files, everywhere.  Is there a way to stop/limit this?

I think it's absurd to haphazardly draw from my entire folder structure rather than the obvious Camera Uploads folder alone.  It's creepy to expect to see a few of my most recent photos but then realize I'm actually looking through thousands of old & new pics, scanned documents, & screenshots, etc. all throughout my archives as well.

[Rich · Accepted solution]

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Neal M.4 wrote:

When using the iOS 11 Dropbox app "Photos" tab I've noticed it has access not just to the "Camera Uploads" folder but to my ENTIRE account; all files, everywhere.  Is there a way to stop/limit this?

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There's no way to prevent that. The purpose of the Photos tab is to show all images from everywhere in your account, including shared folders.

[Neal M.4]

So no controls at all then?

That just seems like an amateur move from Dropbox that I think greatly takes away from their app.  Because everyone knows you need to see your years old financial archive documents mixed in with your recent son's baby pics; am I right!?

It's funny that this small thing will likely lead me to not renew with Dropbox.  While photos are hardly the focus of my account, I do still have something like 36k images in my real photo archive and I've never even tallied the raw .jpg file count everywhere else but that generates a lot of unnecessary spam and I don't really like the idea of those files being unnecessarily crawled.

There are just better options out there is Dropbox's problem and I don't like the idea of third-party photo display app options that would require root & full access to the rest of my Dropbox account. This type of nonsense is proof Dropbox needs folder permission restrictions, I should be able to block unnecessary access and really that should be the default for a real cloud company.

[marlacparker]

@Rich Thank you for confirming what I had just proven to myself.  I duplicated and renamed a photo and added it to a folder that has NOTHING to do with photos.  Sure enough, that second copy of the photo now shows up in my "Photos" section of the Dropbox iOS app on my phone.

This is very disturbing, and inconvenient.  A friend shared with me 100s of photos via Dropbox.  Now they show up on my phone, even when I'm disconnected from wifi and in airplane mode, which means I have copies, on my phone!  And they appear mixed in with MY photos. 

This makes the Photos section of Dropbox unusable to me.  And makes me want to not use Dropbox for looking at friends' photos.  

Is there no selective sync for iOS? That was the first thing I hunted for, but with no joy.

[Mark]

Personally I agree. I hate that tab. Its unprofessional and dangerous.

And no, no selective sync because its technically not needed - nothing is actually downloaded to the device. You are simply seeing a streamed page from the web.