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.
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.
For "this or any later version", I have always read this line as you get to choose which version you want to follow, not the one granting you the licence.
Yeah, but I think the main point is that the GPL 'at your option any later version' clause is a burden on the developer, not the user. Suppose that the software is under the GPLv2 (with the later version clause) and the FSF has a hostile takeover. If:
- 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".
Good point. IANAL, but I think that is more murky terrain. Downstream redistributors like the vendor are not allowed to remove copyright notices, so I think the notice to get it under the GPLv2 or later is passed to the user as well. Not sure which one would weigh stronger then, the copyright notice or the claim of the vendor to ship under a newer version of the license.
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.
TBH, I'm happy because there's an old account I'm unable to access (email address was closed, recovery didn't work) that still has content I would prefer not to be public anymore. The sooner it can vanish the better.
- 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.
If you leave that in it's actually worse, since the platform was discontinued. I had to fix all my client's projects to remove this stuff. One of those stillborn ideas of the EU.
Amazing Dropbox went from a brilliantly simple service to this stagnating corporate swamp of ooze. Yet another fascinating example of how headcount correlates with quality decline.
The pricing got very complicated, that part is true. On the other hand, service quality didn’t go down. They added many small features which makes things easier, on the other hand.
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).
We loved Dropbox and had a family subscription. One of the main reasons we stopped using them (besides it being a US company and Trump threatening declare war to a fellow European NATO ally) was that even though we were paying users, they continuously badgered us with upsells. Using Maestral as a client made things better (at the loss of block-level sync + now unmaintained), but every time I had to log into the web interface I got stupid upsell ads.
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?
I guess teenagers don't have any need to sync files, eh? Hate to see this gradual erosion of internet access for young people - I'd bet half the notable members of this very site started their career trajectory by learning how to break/fix computers in middle school or before
It will simply teach them how to go around those "protections". And put them at risk of using shaddy services to do so. Exactly like what happened with the war on drugs...
Hmmmmm today is a very different world compared to when we used the Internet to learn how to code. Now with Ai doing all the coding is learning how to code even happenning?
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?
This has nothing to do with that. They probably realized that teenagers are a small enough portion of their userbase that the loss of revenue (and probably lack thereof to be fair) is far outweighed by the opportunity to ask users for their ID.
Dropbox will be one of the next Bending Spoons acquisitions. Low growth, none of the upsell or product extension things they've done have really worked out, and no-one's idea of what the future looks like.
Funny that this is the only Dropbox post I've seen on HN besides infamous references to their launch post. You'd think there would be plenty of interesting improvements to make.
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.
This leaves a lot of questions. Why are they raising the age limit? What legislation demands this? Will other services follow? And what if parents give consent? Are users on a family plan now forced to kick off their kids from the joined plan?
I heard you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem
Why hasn't anyone created a windows and mac client that git pushes changes to remote after file activities of local computer, and polls remote repo every 1 minute for changes to pull? I'd gladly pay for that. :-)
Long time Dropbox user here. I would disagree. In my opinion they still have the best file sync platform of the big providers, easily beating onedrive and Google drive for reliability, especially with hundreds of thousands of files.
Yes, brave name choice. I went to have a look and the home page is nice, well laid out, and has links to documents. Small free tier to put your feet in the shallow end, and a couple of monthly plans, one aimed at individuals and the other at orgs. Perhaps a family plan would have benefits?
Alas no linux support, not even an api to allow the use of some terminal command to get round GUI fragmentation. Searching for 'sync online storage with linux' leads to a recent redit thread and a Mint Linux forum thread.
This account has 50 submissions in the last two hours!
[Edit: not the parent; the posting account]
I don’t know why GP’s comment was flagged because submitting at a rate of 25 submissions PER HOUR is not done out of a genuine desire to share something that may be of interest to fellow human beings. Not even for personal bookmarking
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.
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.
https://www.diffchecker.com/QD8AKShC/
https://github.com/technikhil314/offline-diff-viewer
- 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?
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?
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.
At first I was selective in what folders I synced but after a few months I decided to just sync my entire workspace folder with everything in it.
Incredibly convenient, everything is automatically synced between my desktop and laptop.
If you go this route look into filters, it's not a very advertised feature but works great for excluding build output, venvs and other stuff.
1 click install, daily backups, no need to manage anything
Also bypasses the free Dropbox account's limitations on 3 devices.
haven't used it yet. i either back up my data with restic or sync it to other devices with syncthing, but those are tiny files (keepassxc dbs)
It's 2026 and they're handling IT like pariahs of the stone age.
Even they grey beards of the 70s would have worked that out easily.
Good services make change explicit.
Dropbox seems to have degraded into incompetence. Unable to provide good services.
Alas no linux support, not even an api to allow the use of some terminal command to get round GUI fragmentation. Searching for 'sync online storage with linux' leads to a recent redit thread and a Mint Linux forum thread.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
Mission SF Soccer remembers.
- You must access Dropbox every 6 months (from 12) if you have a free to ensure they don't delete your account
I don’t know why GP’s comment was flagged because submitting at a rate of 25 submissions PER HOUR is not done out of a genuine desire to share something that may be of interest to fellow human beings. Not even for personal bookmarking
I cannot imagine it’s Dang doing that, he consistently comes across as much too reasonably for that.
Does that mean flagging is automated when criticizing ‘big outlets’ spamming HN?!? (The spamming account comes across as a person from their bio)