Dropbox Passwords discontinuation
73 comments
·July 29, 2025tiffanyh
alisonatwork
This recently happened to me on Booking.com and... I ended up not using Booking.com to book a hotel. So long, genius status, or whatever.
It absolutely drives me nuts that the western world is moving to "as seen in China" login-via-callback flow. Aside from the privacy issue of forcing people to attach an email or phone number or third-party auth provider to their every account, it's just a waste of time and energy to delete our passwords and force us through this weird multi-app flow just to log in to a service we spent years logging into without ever getting hacked. Imagine if every time you wanted to get into your house you had to press the doorbell and then wait for someone to call you back to decide whether you should be allowed in. It's absurd.
rafram
> "as seen in China" login-via-callback flow
What, exactly, does this mean?
But passkeys are the new hotness, not SSO, and what you’re describing is SSO. Passkeys aren’t tied to an outside account, just a password manager (which can be your browser - no account required).
fooofw
Your parent comment may refer to requesting and waiting for a login link in, say, an email to authenticate - not SSO.
alisonatwork
When I lived in China a common way of "logging in" was to enter an OTP sent to your phone via SMS. By the time I left a few years back it seemed increasingly that signup and login flows were on the way out in favor of simply using your phone number anywhere and everywhere as a personal identifier and OTP or in-app notifications for authentication.
ijustlovemath
This is especially true if you simply increase the minimum password length to a certain amount. The major browsers include password managers for specifically this purpose which can generate passwords; why don't we move towards educating users how to use these tools instead of centralizing all the failure points of the web?
And yes, I understand the major conflict of interest in saving important passwords to Google, which I personally don't do and wouldn't recommend, but I think if they're interested in staying out of the Googleverse, we can also tell people about the good paid alternatives out there.
somenameforme
Paid vs Google seems a bit of a false dichotomy. Bitwarden and countless other such programs are completely free for normal usage. The freemium stuff comes in for business and uses far beyond just a password manager.
userbinator
why don't we move towards educating users how to use these tools instead of centralizing all the failure points of the web
Because there are vested interests in doing the latter. That said, I don't trust password managers either.
hug
> Imagine if every time you wanted to get into your house you had to press the doorbell and then wait for someone to call you back to decide whether you should be allowed in.
This is exactly what I do to visitors to my house.
sofixa
What? You can auth to booking.com with a password just fine (I just did it this morning).
Many sites have "magic links" (they sent you a link to login via email instead of having to write a in password), but there's almost always a way to say you want to log in with your password. Sometimes, especially for touchier things, there's MFA.
> Aside from the privacy issue of forcing people to attach an email or phone number or third-party auth provider to their every account
How do you login without an email, phone number or delegating to a third party? You perform a secret magic dance? Especially for something such as booking.com which more likely than not has your bank details saved, and can wreak havoc (cancel your bookings), I'm really not sure what you want them to do.
alisonatwork
I was surprised when it happened to me too, but it seems to be an anti-feature that has been rolling out for some time now[0]. The ability to use a password has vanished completely.
The thing that makes it particularly egregious is that Booking.com is literally designed to be used on the road, from any location anywhere, on any weird device you might have access to at the time. There's no guarantee that whatever janky airport wifi allows IMAP, or that your phone can receive SMS in whatever country you're in. Forcing 2FA - or now apparently just the "1FA" of magic link/OTP - has made the service useless for its primary purpose.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Bookingcom/comments/1hl055b/cannot_...
bapak
All bets are on Passkeys, but I'm sure a lot of people can't deal with them due to lack of sync across devices.
Passkeys are a great Trojan horse for password managers vs oauth, magic links, "password123" strings
greyface-
For me, the headline evoked memories of this 2011 Dropbox security incident. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2678576
sodality2
Hilarious that the bitrotted dropbox blogpost linked in the techcrunch article discussing this vulnerability (quoted as saying things like “this never should have happened”) instead redirects to some dropbox blog home page, with “What happens when AI joins your team?” prominently featured. Initially I thought their postmortem was blaming AI very openly 14 years ago :D
windexh8er
I was wondering, genuinely: is Dropbox still something the masses use? I found the product to be subpar many years ago and stopped using it and only seemed to read about it continuing to degrade.
tim333
I, speaking as part of the masses, still use it. Works fine for my purposes. I'm not sure what's supposed to be wrong with it?
omnimus
At least in some circles yes. It is very much only sync service creative professionals use.
Mainly due to conflict resolution, corruption and version history. It still has best implemented “online only files”.
Think 10 person design studio all working in one big studio “Work” folder.
So while the clients got bloated Dropbox still has edge in essentials. People trust it unlike other services some of which are straight up infamous for loosing your files like iCloud or corrupting them like adobe creative cloud.
danieldk
And block-level sync. Many sync services only do file-level sync.
chromehearts
I always wondered this too .. I have a feeling their only users are those who just never migrated & users who used 10minmail (who upload "illegal" files (unreleased songs etc.))
omnimus
Where and why would you migrate?
brundolf
Same
stmw
Strategically this doesn't make a lot of sense to me (password management is a natural adjacent product to their core offering), but I am sure they had lots of data that showed it wasn't succeeding. Having been involved in password managemetn before, what I have learned is that it is surprisingly difficult to continue to maintain as both browsers and websites change, the mobile situation is very difficult and it's just one of those software projects that seems simple.. but isn't. So if there is not a big attach rate, it makes sense for Dropbox to drop it.
danieldk
Even as a Dropbox user, I only half-knew that they had a password manager. I try to avoid their website because it tries to push me into a different plan every single time with popups, banners, etc. (despite being on a $20 per month family account).
On the Mac, I avoid their own client and use Maestral for pretty much the same reasons. Unlike their old client, their Mac client annoys you with all kinds of (to me) irrelevant stuff. Only on Linux I use their client, because it's still the old client and does not bother me.
I guess a lot of people that are still using and paying for Dropbox, do it because of their really excellent file sync and try to tune out of anything else because they tried to push too much crap over the years (remember when they tried to push everyone to use their mail client?).
I would rather have them bring things like end-to-end encryption to all account types. Improve the functionality of the core product we are paying them for.
dehrmann
I assume consumers have moved to Google for files and still reuse passwords or use their browser's password manager. Companies have moved passwords to something like Okta, and probably Microsoft, Google, or possibly Box for files.
AznHisoka
What is the biggest thing to maintain? Isn’t it just storing passwords?
thimabi
Integration with browsers and websites, because these password managers are based on autofill rather than copying and pasting passwords.
stmw
Integration and endless QA with the websites for form-filling, and various tricky user flows with sync across desktop and mobile.
ildon
This is very sad news. I've been using their password manager since it came out and, although not perfect, was working very well for me.
As a long standing (paying) user of Dropbox (I believe I've been using it since the very beginning), and former stock holder, I believe Dropbox must adjust its course asap. They lack a clear vision for the future and their current offering is way too limited (and shrinking apparently). For the money they ask there's no point in actually paying for their product, unless one is already locked in. For the same price, or even less, one can get an entire Office suite (Google/MS), plus cloud storage. Sure, Google Drive or OneDrive are nowhere close to Dropbox in terms of sync quality, but how many users (business and consumers) are willing to pay such a premium for quality file sync on top of other subscriptions?
Additionally, for many Dropbox is a no go for the simple fact that they don't have a reliable way to edit documents simultaneously. Recently I was looking for a cloud storage solution for a business that needed collaborative editing of documents. I had to go with Office365, as much as I would have preferred not to, because the way they allow multiple concurrent edits to documents is simply not matched by Dropbox (Google Drive is even better but it lacked some features that were essential for the business).
Unfortunately it looks like the stock market is well aware of this. The capitalization of Dropbox has been essentially stagnating for ~5 years, if adjusted for inflation.
I really hope that Dropbox can change its course by doing some brave acquisitions and rebuild its brand image with a more compelling and comprehensive offering.
kookamamie
> sync quality
Is this really a differentiator nowadays?
SebastianKra
iCloud lost all my data twice. Before that, it was always stuck syncing some unknown files. I also ran into problems where conflict resolution in Apples own office apps wouldn't work and I'd just lose one of the version. So yes.
antonyh
Both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive have had mass file loss events. Local LAN sync is hugely useful too. Upload speed matters, as does conflict resolution. These are features worth paying for.
sofixa
They're a perfect example of why the old adage of "do one thing and do it well" often doesn't scale as a business.
If platforms can provide a competing service, bundled within their package, many will pick it, even if it is worse quality. Dropbox had to expand (like Proton are - they started with email, then added calendar, Drive for file storage, Docs for collaborative editing, Pass for password manager, etc. Even if I would prefer they spend more time to fix gaps in their Android email app, I completely understand why they have to expand their stack).
qnleigh
3 months doesn't seem like enough advanced warning before deleting essential data like this. What if someone is hiking the Pacific Coast Trail right now? Or is the recovering from a serious medical event? Or just doesn't use the app and the email they signed up with that often?
Is it really that expensive for them to maintain minimal access for a year? This is not a rhetorical question.
treetalker
I kinda wish Dropbox would stick to dropboxing.
Always with the product-line creep. No doubt the next offerings will be Dropbox Email and "Dropbox the LLM" (better than Spaceballs the Flamethrower, I suppose).
rjh29
I agree but what are they supposed to do? Cloud sharing is commoditized now and it's easy to move providers. Their only choice was to try to move up the stack, but there is no clear direction. It's video editing, e-signatures/encryption, passwords, AI, document editing... so far I haven't found any of those offerings useful. Their Linux support is however much appreciated.
Groxx
Reduce price. Reduce the abominable resource usage. Allow E2E encryption. Increase performance so it doesn't trickle at tens of kilobytes for hours when I have 100Mbps upload and half a terabyte left.
Like. Build a decent product. The lack of any major competition doesn't mean they should stop improving and branch out into costly absurdity, at least try to keep up with Maestral with 100x the headcount.
twright0
> Reduce price. Reduce the abominable resource usage. Allow E2E encryption. Increase performance so it doesn't trickle at tens of kilobytes for hours when I have 100Mbps upload and half a terabyte left.
How do you imagine that any of these things would strengthen Dropbox's business at a scale relevant to them?
Reducing price would be straightforwardly bad; most users do not understand resource usage complaints (though I'm not conceding that problem exists - it's a non-factor on my machine); E2E encryption is an anti-feature for a consumer audience who will lock themselves out and demand refunds far above the rate at which anyone will pay for E2E specifically; most users do not have half a terabyte all at once to store nor upload speeds such that the Dropbox app performance is the limiting factor, even if those performance problems are true.
> The lack of any major competition
Dropbox's core product faces substantial competition from multiple tech giants (Google Drive, One Drive, iCloud) who have incentive and ability to eat losses on a sync product to sell other services or devices. If they don't find other lines of business to sell alongside sync they will die, and building an incrementally better sync product will not save them.
(I worked at Dropbox a ~decade ago and no longer have any insider insight nor financial stake in the company, but I sympathize that they're in a brutally difficult position in building a sustainable business)
kelvinjps10
Anyone knows about a good Dropbox alternative? That supports Linux
andrewmcwatters
> Like. Build a decent product.
Man, wouldn’t it be so cool if tech companies actually were competitive instead of trying to establish parasitic marketshare or dying with no in-between?
Hamuko
I doubt that Dropbox is able to compete on price against companies like Google, who can bundle all of their Google services in the same package as Google Drive while being able to reduce hosting costs through sheer scale.
bigstrat2003
Well... they could have not enabled a "share your data with us" checkbox without ever asking the user. I have no idea how many customers they lost by playing fast and loose with privacy (I, at least, was one), but it doesn't seem like it could've been worth it.
slyall
Is cloud sharing really commoditized ?
How many other options are they to sync files between my laptop and my phone, especially if my Laptop is running Linux?
geoffpado
> Dropbox Email
Been there, done that: https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873268/why-dropbox-mailb...
hn8726
Dropbox "ai" already exists too: https://dash.dropbox.com/
bapak
You could say Google should have stuck to search, Apple to computers, IBM to punching cards. As companies grow, they want to diversify and not die.
coro_1
There are 5 steps for every one 1 there once was for any given operation on the platform. The next offering will be 6 steps.
joey486DX4
Surprised they wouldn't just recommend KeePassXC with the database saved in the Dropbox folder. I've done this since the inception of Dropbox.
rjh29
Google are known for cancelling products but you can at least be sure your files, passwords, bookmarks, map pins, and e-mails aren't going away. They have a core set of apps they've maintained for over two decades without pulling the rug out from under them.
mantra2
I always figure with Google as long as the products are part of the core Apps/G-Suite/Workspace offering they’re fairly safe to use and anything else is a coin flip.
sitzkrieg
companies aquiring/integrating/developing password managers has been the biggest red flag ever
relyks
This stinks. I use this as my main password manager :(
uplendaguy
[dead]
Not knowing that Dropbox offered a password manager … I misinterpreted the headline to mean I could no longer log into my Dropbox account with a password anymore (and thought they were forcing passkeys).