Dropbox's Jan 1st 2027 terms of service
dropbox.comMajor changes:
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.
> Your account may be terminated if you don't have a Paid account and haven't accessed for 6 months
I hope file sync is treated as "access", otherwise this would make me anxious.
At least they claim they will give 'reasonable advance notification':
> 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.
> 5. You automatically agree to the new terms if you continue to have an account.
I would really love to see courts throw this BS out.
I agree with you in principle.
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.
Certainly, but would that even be enforceable from a perspective of the grantee?
"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.
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.
Yes, the developer is the grantee in my comment.
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.
* A German court process found that the GPLv2 does have an anti-tivoization clause
* 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).
Yes, that clause hinges on both parties trusting the FSF to adhere to free software principles. So far this has been an extremely good assumption.
I am not questioning the integrity of FSF, but whether the "or any later version" would hold up in court in principle.
Diffchecker for the save
Super useful. Any open source tools like this?
Looks like the major changes are:
- 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.
That last point is funny... so arbitration agreements are designed to make the process intentionally more difficult. Can't provide too many hints!
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.
I don't think that's the reason. From the linked site:
> The European Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Platform is discontinued as of 20 July 2025
Trying to download all my 5GB of files from the web client gives me an "Attempted to zip too many files."
I guess the only way to get or export your data is through the desktop client?
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...
It is not about age. It is just a way to tie accounts to a real life identity.
It won't be surprising if the requirement comes from some alphabet agency.
Don't most countries give people their first IDs before 18? Mine does it at 14.
In the U.S., you can get a passport for a baby. In my state, you can get a state ID for your child.
Sure, but they could still check the age while also linking the ID.
Dont they already have the payment information?
Not universally. I've had a free dropbox account for nearly 2 decades, and never attached a payment method
It’s erosion of closed saas, not the internet. That already broke the hacker environments of yesteryear.
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.
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?
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.
I don't understand this mentality. Growth must be explosively exponential or things are bad, so company must sell out, close shop and go.
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.
Does this mean that young adults that work for companies that use Dropbox, cannot collaborate with others using Dropbox?
My Dropbox account was deleted after years of inactivity. While it was definitely on me, and their terms clearly stated that "We reserve the right to" delete the account, I was surprised that no notification was sent. Yes, I checked my emails, nothing.
Needles to say, I never used Dropbox since then.
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?
Drobpox has an AI backend running on their own clusters. IOW, Dropbox runs their own local models, integrated to their offerings. As their AI offerings get more features, I believe they want to be on the safe side, so they increased the age limit.
I've been a happy customer of Tresorit for several years now. Give them a try if you're fed up with Dropbox.
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.
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.
What’s a good Dropbox alternative? Especially for Macs. Feels like they spent twenty years just making the Mac client worse.
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
Brilliant :). Since this is currently going to woosh for younger visitors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
Self-host. NextCloud on a moose instance https://mooseos.com/store/nextcloud
1 click install, daily backups, no need to manage anything
Yeah, definitely not 1-to-1 comparison as moose has a VM underneath and you can run pretty much anything
Dropbox is 2TB for the same price as your 40GB. Cool idea though.
9€/m for 40GB? Yeah no, thats a terrible suggestion!
Just get yourself a Hetzner Storage Share for 4.29€/m with nextcloud managed for you and 1TB!
That is a great offer if you're only looking for a nextcloud backup. If you also need an immich instance and some jellyfin, you need another machine.
A single purpose service is always more efficient then a more generilized one
Use maestral.app on Linux and macOS.
Also bypasses the free Dropbox account's limitations on 3 devices.
iCloud Drive is the obvious choice.
Last I've tried iCloud Drive is not preserving file attributes especially if you want to use it cross OS between Mac and Windows. Dropbox does.
Last time I checked, there was no file history, which basically meant it's useless to me.
iCloud Drive does not allow you to recover files if you put them into the trash and empty it by accident. I learned this the hardest of ways.
Self-hosted Seafile + Tailscale works great for me.
Filen
PCloud is another one I like. Been using it for a few years and am happy with it.
If you only have ios and mac clients why not icloud?
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. :-)
I don't think that will play well with binary files. Even as small as a PDF of a few pages?
i think that's kind of what rclone is https://github.com/rclone/rclone
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)
Unfortunately rclone for some stupid reason is blocked on my corporate account :(
Rclone doesn't support MacOS extended file attributes. Or it didn't in the past anyway.
Diff or it didn't happen
100%
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.
Oh it's probably intentional. I've seen efforts to simplify terms of service get rejected because "more people might read it if it's shorter".
Well, diff it then?
(I'm a former user of dropbox.)
Good services make change explicit.
Dropbox seems to have degraded into incompetence. Unable to provide good services.
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.
I switched to Sync last year. Much cheaper, better quality.
I didn't know about Sync. TIL someone had the guts to start a company named "Sync" in 2011.
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.
not sure if this helps: https://help.sync.com/hc/en-us/articles/55076263500051-How-t...
Let that sync in
forgot to link: https://help.sync.com/hc/en-us
If the enshittification continues, it might be time to go back to rsync [0].
i'm so happy with syncthing project.
Not the first time Dropbox bros kicked kids off a platform.
Mission SF Soccer remembers.
TL;DR?
- You must be 18+
- You must access Dropbox every 6 months (from 12) if you have a free to ensure they don't delete your account
I did a comparison with an LLM of my choice and there was no meaningful difference (or nothing I would consider HN-worthy).
Given the HN-worthy differences posted by others, here’s another example of why it’s not a good idea to delegate your thinking to LLMs.
I… guess? I'm not sure why this was posted. None of these changes seem important.
I saw a comment and didn’t prompt an LLM and see the whole difference: https://www.diffchecker.com/QD8AKShC/
This person has over 1000 submissions. Going for the quantity-first approach I guess...
Edit: following up my less productive comment with a productive one: this ToS update was crowd-sourced diff treasure-hunt with, at the end, no treasure to be found. These ToS changes are really quite unremarkable. I wonder which change of terms OP decided were interesting enough to post about.
Or: they use it as their personal bookmarking tool
There's at least 10 other accounts who do the same
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
Some accounts have a clearly more privileged status here and are allowed to upload content without limits - especially from big outlets.
Still why does a comment noticing that get flagged?
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)
And now this honest question is getting down-voted!! What’s going on?