Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud storage and collaborative workspace provider based in the United States.

7.3/10

How we calculate ratings →

Handling

Does the policy allow personally-targeted or behavioral marketing? No

10/10

Does the service allow you to permanently delete your personal data? Yes, using an automated mechanism

5/5

Does the service allow third-party access to private personal data? Yes, all parties specified (including non-critical service providers such as advertisers)

3/10

This may come in the form of outright data sharing or by using local third-party analytics software (such as Google Analytics, which collects a plethora of user information).

Note that whether the policy allows sharing aggregated user data does not affect this question.

If the personal data is encrypted when it passes through the third-party, it does not count as third-party access (as the data is inaccessible to that party).

If personal data has been made public by, for example, posting it to a blog, it does not count as private personal information (and is therefore not considered by this question).

Score

Yes

The policy allows sharing personal data with third parties (not just critical service providers), and does not explicitly list the third parties.

Yes, all parties specified (including non-critical service providers such as advertisers)

30%

Yes, not all parties specified (but only to critical service providers)

70%

Yes, all parties specified (only to critical service providers)

80%

100%

Citation

Others working for and with Dropbox. Dropbox uses certain trusted third parties (such as providers of customer support and IT services) to help us provide, improve, protect and promote our Services. These third parties will access your information to perform tasks on our behalf, and we’ll remain responsible for their handling of your information per our instructions. For a list of trusted third parties that we use to process your personal data, please see our FAQ

Trusted third parties include:

Dropbox, Inc.
Amazon Web Services, Inc.
Teleperformance A.E.
Salesforce.com, LLC
Serenova, LLC (formerly LiveOps Cloud Platform, LLC)
Google LLC
Zendesk, Inc.
Oracle America, Inc.

When does the policy allow law enforcement access to personal data? When reasonably requested

3/5

Score

Always

This includes cases in which law enforcement either runs the service or has a known backdoor into (or relationship with) the service.

Not specified

When reasonably requested

60%

Only when required by a court order or subpoena

80%

N/A (no personal data to share)

The service would have no personal data to share with law enforcement.

100%

Never (special legal jurisdiction)

The service operates in a jurisdiction in which sharing data with law enforcement is never required.

100%

Citation

Law & order and the public interest. We may disclose your information to third parties if we determine that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or appropriate government request;
We publish a Transparency Report as part of our commitment to informing you about when and how governments ask us for information. This report details the types and numbers of requests we receive from law enforcement. We encourage you to review our Government Request Principles and Transparency Report for more detailed information about our approach and response to government requests.

Transparency

Does the policy outline the service's general security practices? Somewhat

1/3

Score

Somewhat

The policy provides only a very vague overview of its security practices.

30%

Yes

60%

Yes, including audits

"Reviews," "monitoring," etc. also count as audits.

80%

Yes, including independent audits

Independent "reviews," "monitoring," etc. also count as independent audits.

100%

N/A

The service doesn't collect any personal information.

100%

Citation

Security. We have a team dedicated to keeping your information secure and testing for vulnerabilities. We continue to work on features to keep your information safe in addition to things like two-factor authentication, encryption of files at rest, and alerts when new devices and apps are linked to your account. We deploy automated technologies to detect abusive behaviour and content that may harm our Services, you or other users.

Is the policy's history made available? Yes, with revisions or a changelog

5/5

Does the policy require users to be notified in case of a data breach? Yes, within 72 hours

7/7

Will affected users be notified when the policy is meaningfully changed? Yes

5/5

Collection

Does the service collect personal data from third parties? No

10/10

Is it clear why the service collects the personal data that it does? Mostly

7/10

Does the service allow the user to control whether personal data is collected or used for non-critical purposes? On an opt-out basis, but only for some non-critical data/uses

3/10

Does the policy list the personal data it collects? Yes, generally

7/10

Score

The policy does not claim to not collect personal data, but it also doesn't provide any meaningful insight into the types of personal data it collects.

Only summarily

The policy uses overly vague language to provide a summary of the types of collected personal data.

30%

Yes, generally

All general categories of collected personal data are listed, though not all types of personal data are explicitly mentioned (for example, the list might use a phrase like 'such as' when listing types of personal data).

70%

Yes, exhaustively

All types of collected personal data are listed specifically

100%

N/A (no personal data is collected)

100%

Notes

See the What & Why section in the privacy policy.

Last Updated

March 28, 2021

Sources

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Contributors

kulchynska, ibarakaiev