Dropbox denies giving researchers non-anonymized user data
Dropbox has denied claims that researchers obtained non-anonymized data from users of the cloud file storage service.
A study by Northwestern University researchers posted Friday, and co-bylined with a Dropbox insights manager, revealed how collaborative platforms are used by teams of people.
But a key line in the write up claimed that Dropbox "gave [the researchers] access to project-folder-related data" over a two-years period from about 400,000 users across 1,000 universities, which the researchers said they "aggregated and anonymized." The researchers said that this included a user's "total number of folders, folder structure, and shared folder access," but noted that they and Dropbox employees "could view no personally identifiable information."
