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Forum Discussion
Email Address Privacy Toggle Switch for Shared Folders for Users That Only Have the Ability to View
When you "share a folder" all users of that folder can see all of the other users email addresses. This is privacy issue. If I give 500 people the ability to "view" but not "edit" the folder, I don't want all these people to see the other people's email addresses. There is no reason for them to see them. There is no collaboration in the folder. I am just sharing it. So, to uphold someone's privacy the 500 other people that they don't know should not have the ability see other people's email addresses. There is no Dropbox plan, no option to hide email addresses among those that can only "view" the folder. This is a major privacy issue. Ideally, a simple switch should be put on the owner's dashboard (the person that is sharing the folder) to hide all email addresses so each person in the folder doesn't have the ability to see all the other peoples email addresses. Doesn't seem logical that this "switch" isn't already a feature due to privacy issues.
- Nancy
Dropbox Staff
Hey RHP1, thanks for posting on our forum.
We really appreciate your feedback on this.
In the meantime, what you can perhaps try as a workaround is to send a shared link to these users and disable viewer info (in case the users that access it are already logged in to their Dropbox account).
Hope this helps!
The problem with a "shared link" vs. a "shared folder" is that anyone who has that link could share it with others, resulting in loss of control on who has access to the content...correct? With a "shared folder" I can remove users. Unless I don't understand this correctly, a "shared link" could be published by someone other than me and the contents then are accessible to anyone on the web.
- Hannah
Sorry to jump in here, RHP1!
Indeed, anyone with access to the shared link, can re-share it with others, if you're on our Dropbox Basic or Plus plans.
Users on our Dropbox Professional and Business plans, have access to additional features, such as expiration dates for the links or the ability to disable downloads.
You can read more about those here.
You're always free to delete the shared link, though, to stop people from accessing the content.
Thanks for the reply...but this still isn't a good solution. It just seems like Dropbox should have a feature that hides the email addresses when a user just has the ability to "view" a shared folder. It really doesn't seem like it is that complicated of a feature to implement, especially for a person's privacy.
Right now I have a "shared folder" that over 600 people have access to. I just don't want the users to see each other emails. If I create a link with an expiration date, then that user will lose access to the contents after that date. I will have to keep recreating the link with farther out expiration dates as more people have access. If I add a password to the shared link, the password really does nothing in the ability of someone sharing the contents with others. If someone is going to share the link, they will also just share the password (does Netflix come to mind?).
Looks like this is still the issue... I consider this a severe problem too.
