Is hosting on Dropbox private, anonymous? [closed]

Question

I've seen others host images on Dropbox. Is there a way to find out the user hosting the file?

For example, if I post a Dropbox picture online, can any user find my name or username? Can link it to other uploads?

Thanks

Butcher

Answer 1

Dropbox links are obfuscated, meaning there is no way to tell the directory structure by looking at the link. Also, contents on the same folder might have name close to one another but their shared link will be different. For example:

• /Public/reports/doc1.txt -> www.dropbox.com/s/32nwq9a6y9q74hr/doc1.txt
• /Public/reports/doc2.txt -> www.dropbox.com/s/wmveygkiea16sme/doc2.txt

So, there is no way to find link to other uploads (even in the same folder). Also, opening the shared link does not show any information about the host user. If viewer is logged in, it will show the viewer at the corner of the page.

However, the user might be exposed based on the metadata on the files that are uploaded. When user uploads a file, dropbox retains the metadata in that file. So, someone with the link can download the file (along with metadata) and find sensitive user information. For example, image files in these days contains information about the device, geolocation, time of modification etc. This does not give away the user account but can leak other information.

Footlambert

Be careful, if the link is outside of the public Dropbox folder and you create a public link the commenting feature reveals the name of the person who made the link public webapps.stackexchange.com/a/77975 – Longinus