Posted by simonebrunozzi 3 days ago
1. You must be 18 to use Dropbox. Previously, you had to be 13 if in the United States, or 16 if higher. Dropbox may use information "Dropbox may use and rely on information from third parties, including age signals from app stores, for the purpose of enforcing this restriction."
2. Your account may be terminated if you don't have a Paid account and haven't accessed for 6 months. Previously, it was 12 months.
3. If you have multiple accounts tied to the same email address, and one is banned, the others may also be banned.
4. "Refunds are only issued if required by law." -> "Refunds are only issued in limited circumstances or if required by law."
5. You automatically agree to the new terms if you continue to have an account. Previously, it was only if you continued to use the service.
6. Some terms covering Teams accounts.
I hope file sync is treated as "access", otherwise this would make me anxious.
> We’ll provide you with reasonable advance notice via the email address associated with your account to remedy the activity that prompted us to contact you and give you the opportunity to export Your Stuff from our Services. If after such notice you fail to take the steps we ask of you, we’ll terminate or suspend your access to the Services.
I would really love to see courts throw this BS out.
It would also potentially invalidate clauses like the one in GPL license too: "this version or any later version" — how can anyone consent to yet-unknown terms?
In this particular case and going after the summary from big85, there's one case of legal compliance (like age restrictions — it applies in appropriate jurisdictions even if the ToS is not updated) or maybe two (banning per-account vs per-owner), some widening of the terms to the benefit of the customer (like refunds being permitted in "special circumstances" on top of "required by law, with only "reductionist" change being about lowering service window for unused free accounts (in some jurisdictions, even this could be about respecting data privacy laws — companies are obligated to remove any data which is not used after a certain time, though I think this is 12 months even under GDPR).
As such, I believe this would not be a good case where you can bring enough light how this type of clause is harming one side to the contract.
"Hey, I trusted FSF to do the right thing with the next version and they did not"
They blindly accepted to honor the terms which have not yet been defined.
- The FSF makes a GPLv4 to remove all commercial use, it's not a problem for the user since they could stick with the GPLv2. It's not a problem for the developer either, since the extra requirement that they may not agree with is only optional (since the GPLv2 can still be used).
- The FSF makes a license that says: screw copyleft, GPLv4 is now the MIT license. Again, it's not a problem for the user, they can either continue to use the GPLv2 or make use of the additional liberties of the MIT license (e.g. using the code in close source work). But it is a problem for the developer. They chose to use a copyleft license and now everybody can grab their code and use it in closed source software, etc.
This is vastly different from the Dropbox changes, since every update of the terms affects the user.
Though even the "user" might be harmed, because you might get a device shipped to you with what-was-previously-copyleft software, and now you can't ask the vendor (also the "user") for copy of the source code since they can claim "we are using it under the terms of v4, sorry".
Another question is whether a newer version would even apply if it was not in the same spirit as the included GPL version, since the license also states:
The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Again, IANAL, but I always felt like many of the parts of the GPL are ambiguous and the interpretation would only become clear in a court case.
For the GPLv2 there is already a lot of malicious things a vendor can do anyway. In contrast to the GPLv3, GPLv2 does not have the 'anti-tivoization'-clause. So, even though the vendor may be required to provide source code, you may not be able to run the software with your modifications anyway, because the vendor uses a bootloader that will only run software that they sign.
* If the FSF published something clearly against the spirit, like "Microsoft can take ownership of your IP", it is not clear a judge would allow this. If it's within the same spirit, like "you agree to allow forks that aren't substantially different to use your trademark", they probably would. Legal loopholes aren't like computer hacking, they are social engineering.
* If I can use it under GPLv2 and GPLv2 allows me to redistribute it under GPLv2, then I can redistribute it under GPLv2. "Or later" means that I can pick a version to comply with, not that I have to comply with all of them simultaneously. So I can always remove the "or later" clause. I can also change it to "GPLv3 or later" since I may choose to comply with any subset of the allowed licenses (here all of them except for GPLv2).
It won't be surprising if the requirement comes from some alphabet agency.
Also, just talked two friends who work for mid-size companies and last week both of their CEOs told them to just point Ai to their Jira tickets to finish all their tasks. Anyone else hearing their CEOs instruct the same thing?
- some stuff about Teams that's mostly only relevant if you're using your work email for a personal account
- minimium age 13 -> 18; add "Dropbox may use and rely on information from third parties, including age signals from app stores, for the purpose of enforcing this restriction."
- free accounts may be terminated after 6 months of no use (previously 12 months)
- removed "If you reside in the EU, the European Commission provides for an online dispute resolution platform, which you can access here: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr." from the dispute resolution process.
> The European Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Platform is discontinued as of 20 July 2025
I use a bunch of additional services they offer. They work well, make me spend less money and save my time (e.g.: send, transcription, advanced sharing controls).
I once contacted their customer support about this and their answer was "Oh really? Can you send some examples?" So I sent them screenshots of all the upselling banners, popups, etc. that they showed and I never heard back from them.
It also didn't make sense at all. Why, if I'm using Dropbox for family use, would I upgrade to a business plan?
So, Google should sell Google Drive, Box shall close down, PCloud must cease to exist, Mega shall sell itself to a three letter agency a-la Crypto AG, Sugarsync shall vanish, etc...
Yet we are here. These are all stable products chugging along.
Bending Spoons need "great" deals to go after, such as Airtable, etc. Dropbox has a market cap of ~$8B, and it's not "cheap" compared to revenues, etc.
If Dropbox goes "down" in the next few years, perhaps you will eventually be right.
Needles to say, I never used Dropbox since then.
Having been a paid user for the last decade my current experience is just getting error messages on my phone every week that something failed to sync, and that I have to re-enter the app every ~month to disable/enable syncing for my offline files, otherwise it doesn't work. I can't remember any time I've been pleasantly surprised by any change to the service.