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Updating our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Dropbox for Business Agreement

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Published on February 20, 2014

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We’ve made a lot of changes to Dropbox since we last updated our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and online Dropbox for Business Agreements. So today, we're starting to email users to let you know about some updates to these policies. The updates will be effective on March 24, 2014.

We know that these types of updates are really important to you, and we want to help you understand them. Here’s a walk-through of the major changes:

  • Arbitration. We’re adding arbitration clauses to our Terms of Service and Dropbox for Business online agreement. Arbitration is a faster and more efficient way to resolve legal disputes, and it provides a good alternative to things like state or federal courts, where the process could take months or even years. If you prefer to opt out of arbitration in the Terms of Service, there’s no need to fax us or trek to the post office — just fill out this quick online form.

  • Permissions. We care about having Terms of Service that are readable, give the right amount of context, and avoid unnecessary legalese, so we’ve updated our language to better match the permissions you give us with the features you use. For example, to provide you with document previews, our automated systems need permission to access and scan your stuff for those previews — so we explain this in the new Terms.

  • Privacy Policy. We’ve clarified several sections of our Privacy Policy to better explain how our services use your information. Take contacts, for example. When you give us access to your contacts, we’ll store them so that you — and only you — can easily share your stuff, regardless of whether you’re using Dropbox on your phone, tablet, or home computer. We’ve also added a section explaining our recently launched Government Data Request Principles, which describe our commitment to protecting your privacy when handling government requests.

  • Mailbox. It’s been almost a year since Mailbox joined the Dropbox family, and we’re finally transitioning the app to the same Terms of Service and Privacy Policy as the rest of Dropbox.

  • Dropbox for Business. We’ve made great leaps over the past year as we’ve grown and developed Dropbox for Business to help companies work smarter. Our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy updates more clearly reflect the advancements we’ve built for admins and end users.

We hope you’ll read the full Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Business Agreement. While we’ve simplified much of the language, our commitment to keeping your stuff safe and secure hasn’t changed. We don’t sell your personal information to third parties. We don’t serve ads based on the stuff you store in our services. And, as always, your stuff is yours.

Over the next few days, we’ll be emailing all our users to ensure you hear about these updates from us.