Question

EMILY DREYFUSS SCIENCE

WAS IT ETHICAL FOR DROPBOX TO SHARE CUSTOMER DATA WITH SCIENTISTS?

Please explain for me above what is this about?

Answer 1

Answer)
Researchers at Northwestern University were for long analyzing the habits of thousands of scientists—using Dropbox through data such as academics' folder-sharing habits and then such collaboration behaviors in common were information to them. They published this result after that. As Dropbox gave the access to project-folder-related data which were allegedly aggregated and anonymized and the data consisted of 1,000 universities. Thus, Dropbox allegedly handed over personally identifiable information on hundreds of thousands of customers. But Dropbox later claimed that before even sharing the activity data with NICO, they had randomized or hashed the dataset such that no identifying information could be derived and the scientists were bound by the strict confidentiality obligations. And also, another thing is that the research was conducted without the express consent of the thousands of customers whose information was accessed. But Dropbox said that the data was delivered to the researchers deidentified. Dropbox, however, claims that the users gave consent when they agreed to the company's privacy terms and that the data will be used to improve the Dropbox services.