FWIW I’ve just done the same and Ghostery didn’t find any trackers, neither did Cookie, which is set to delete any trackers, log any.
Incidentally anyone who doesn’t wish to use DropBox might find it worth giving Box a try. I’ve used it on occasion and it seems OK with package files. YMMV of course - use at your own risk. Being aimed more at business users they may take a different approach to security although I doubt whether there is that much of a difference.
I almost never log on to the Dropbox web interface. Usually only use the app, on both Mac and iOS. The apps are downloaded via App store so they shouldn’t contain spy ware, right? So what’s the big danger?
A sudden spike in your tin-foil budget?
A. there is no Scrivener SYNC via iTunes!! All you can do is COPY a complete project file. Thats called copying, not syncing although it happens while iTunes actually syncs data between other ios and osx applications.
What for do i need a multiplatform software if i can’t use to work it on a smartphone, a pad and a desktop/laptop at random on the same project without having the need for manual file management?
You have a glorious idea on a morning beach walk and manifest that in same Scriener acts on the phone. Back on the boat you put some meat to that while its still fresh and you do that on the pad as the laptop needs a charge first before the next session. Then later you fire up the newly charged laptop and sync from the phone and pad and get it all together. That is what a cooperating multiplatform SW does. What am I gonna do? Wait with my ideas until the laptop is charged(at least nobody was able to work on the project here 
, then copy the phone file to the laptop, then to pad, then back. Or rename the project files as per device and the copy, open and cut and paste ? Gotta be kidding me, right ?
Lets face it, Scrivener is not a cooperating multiplatform SW without the use of Dropbox. Period !!! Copying project files has Nothing to do with syncing, absolutely nothing. We have to stop talking of syncing Scrivener files via iTunes, because there is no such thing.
B. for the Dropbox fans. If you can’t see multiple trackers when you are active in Dropbox, then you are not looking. And actually I don’t care what other people do with their privacy. You can trade whatever of yoursel to whoever for whatever price. But I care about mine and I am simply put off by having a great piece of SW which has a total lack of syncing cababilities unless I’d be willing for a free data donating account with Dropbox.
I don’t have a FB account, because I don’t need it. I don’t have a Google, Whatsup, Snapchat, and whatever account, because I don’t need it. Nor do I need a Dropbox account. All i need is a good writing SW.
C. I have not asked for a refund, neither do i plan to so, and I still think that with the exception of this syncing mess that Scrivener is great SW and that Keith and his team have done a tremendous job.
But I also do think that it is my right as a customer to voice my frustration. I would simply not have expected being left in the rain like this.
Enough of this. Other SW will come up or bd available, or I will just keep using notepad and the osx version. The way we write and record our thoughts will change in ways yet unimaginable, very soon. And privacy will be an option.
it is outright scary of what some people know of how they are spied on. Do yourself a favor and read Dropbox’ privacy policy and exactly which data they collect. On the IZoS spps too. And close your mobile browser and clear website data cache before you fire up tge dropbox app on ios. And never leave the dropbox app open. And there are tools who show you which traffic with which servers.
There is no such thing as syncing. When you synchronize between devices, you copy what’s different from one device to the other. This can be done using cable, or WiFi, directly or using an intermediate data handling server, like Dropbox, or iCloud, or iTunes. So all syncing is just copying. How else would you do it? Magic?
About not using FB or anything else… Does this mean that you don’t use the internet either? Oh, wait, you ARE reading and writing on this forum. How come you dare to do that? Do you use email? Those are stored on a remote server… 
I actually have a habit of reading the privacy policies of the services I use, and I don’t see anything dangerous in there. Can you explain exactly what it is you are afraid of will happen if you use Dropbox?
I actually went and reread Dropbox’s privacy policy. Nothing there is worse than any other privacy policy. Yes, your account info (name, email etc.) are public, but even for those there are explanations, they are public so you can be searchable for the share features etc. No, they don’t read your content, unless there is a court order. Unlike google which reads your emails all the time to serve you ads and whatnot. Or Facebook which reads all your posts and chats for the same reason.
Now, unless they routinely violate their own privacy policy (which I can’t prove either way), there is nothing there that would make my scrivenings unsafe. And believe me, I write stuff that is illegal in some countries and gray area in some others. Even the whole permissions on macOS fiasco recently turned out to be a false alarm. Not everyone out there is in the data selling business. Google is. Facebook is. Most social networks are. Whatsapp? Not with end to end encryption, even though I don’t use that app.
Just because a business model doesn’t make sense to me, doesn’t mean it is not profitable. I have 50GB for life and for free on Box just because I was on their initial mac and ios testing phase. Dropbox had for a period done deals with a lot of academic institutions and offers business packages that have even stricter privacy policies, and profitable pricing. Even I thought of buying a paid subscription, until I found out I would never fill my quota with my current use. So they are making money from that. Do they read/sell my data? Not likely. Is my data safe? That is up to me. Is my password changed often and not easily crackable? Do I use two factor auth.? Those are the real security measures.
Tracking cookies and services make no difference unless you are writing war correspondence from some brutal dictatorship. Otherwise, nobody looks to steal my novel. They don’t even know I am writing it. And if they did wish to steal mine, they would have stolen something bigger, and word would get out. It really would. Remember the iCloud hacks not too long ago? Even almighty Apple couldn’t keep that hush-hush.
Not to sound as gloating, sure, I’d love more syncing options including iCloud, Box and/or OneDrive. But I can’t demand from L&L to fix what big corporations made broken.
@lunk - the two of us will simple have to agree that we have a different view of what our rights to privacy are
@pescat - "they are not worse than others ". Really sorry to hear that you lowered your privacy standards to that. How dare you expect others to do the same.
And again, i don’t care what you give away, I intend to give away nothing !!! Not my scrivenings, my location, my browser history, its nobodies business but mine. I am not hiding anything, I just keep my private life private. Do you have a problem with that ?
And lets be very clear. Ios scrivener without dropbox can NOT sync. Thats the initial problem and that won’t go away until Keith and his team are fixing it. Because a SW which is only operable on multiple platforms with the addition of external services, is imho not fit to be sold as a multiplatform SW.
cheerio
Literature and Latte simply does not have the resources to support our own cloud service, so some sort of external service will always be necessary for cross-platform synchronization. If this is an insurmountable obstacle for you, feel free to request a refund through the iTunes store. Apple is generally quite accommodating of such requests.
Katherine
Katherine,
don’t get me wrong. I do “love” Scrivener and I think you guys did a great job with the IOS version too. But requiring a shady third party cloud app to sync my creative works, which collects whatever else data they can get their hands on, is just not ok imho.
Running Dropbox apps on all devices, all the time, is just what they need to create and sell mega profiles of their users.
The reason they do not offer automatic encryption is that it would disable their data collection model. No excuse there. The NSA will do whatever is in their powers to prevent, or compromise end user controlled encryption as it would be the end of many of their spy projects.
Your Dropbox data is actually stored on Amazon’s S3 storage service, which means that it is securely encrypted there but that DropBox retain the encryption keys and could theoretically access it. Indeed, DropBox’s privacy policy states that certain employees have this power for use when data is legally required to be disclosed.
Its very clear that my Scrivener data is NOT save with Dropbox, lets not even talk about Amazon. And don’t underestimate the data collection via all the trackers while using DropBox.
What I like to see is a sync option which doesn’t require any cloud service, or a built in encryption where “I” have the keys, not DropBox.
There is of course a much bigger battle behind the curtains. North American laws are quite different from European laws when it comes to secure data and cloud services. And there is little hope this will change in the future. The CEO’s of Google, Amazon and and and have already massive political influence in the US (no wonder with the duds they have running for office) whether it is ES joining the BOD of the Pentagon, or the Amazon CEO taken control of the LA Times to just give you some examples. They are just extensions of the NSA. I personally expect this to be an ongoing battle between especially North America and Europe.
Without Snowden’s revelations we’d still think that mass data collection is some apocalyptic future threat.
The future of data security does NOT lie with these NSA affiliates, it lies in OPEN SOURCE and educated users and application developers who respect and honor personal privacy. We really do need a NSA, Google, Amazon, … free IT infrastructure.
You say you don’t have the resources to code your own sync. Maybe you need to ask us to spend $100 for the app instead of $ 25. I sure would be willing to support your efforts accordingly.
Until then I’ll use the IOS app as an independent app with manual copy and paste sync, as it is simply impossible to efficiently do that otherwise without corrupting your data.
cheerio and keep up the good work
Actually, the sync code is the easy part. I said that we don’t have the resources to support our own cloud service. Nor is that an area where we have any particular expertise or interest.
And what makes you think that a roll-your-own service put together on a shoestring by a small company with no security expertise would meet your standards anyway? That sounds like exactly the way to get a service with enough holes for the NSA to drive a truck through.
Katherine
Sorry, you misunderstood me, I may have been not clear enough in my post. If you read my post, I am asking actually for a SYNC without the involvement of any cloud service. So why don’t you just offer that if its that easy 
. That would be great.
I am actually not worried about the NSA proof reading my scrivenings. Its just that my personal life, including all my computer use, is none of their business. I don’t think they drive trucks anymore , they hide in secure buildings, spy on everybody and fly drones, the cowards. Actually the main nuisance is in all the trackers which come along with all cloud services. You’re obviously looking away while that happens or have completely different standards when it comes to personal privacy and of course that is your personal choice.
If you say the sync code is that easy. What about integrating a small utility which does the syncing after I have copied the project file via iTunes ?
I haven’t been actively coding for quite a while and have never coded for IOS so I have to admit I don’t really know on how much open source code is available these days. But from my past experience I would think that there is sufficient “transparent” code out there to create a solution without breaking the resource bank or handing your customers to the data collection vultures. And looking at Scrivener itself, I am quite confident that the LL team is a very capable team too.
cheerio
I looked with ghostery - what else do you recommend? Do you have any replicable evidence that db is tracking?
I don’t get it, but hopefully you can explain.
After you have copied the files via iTunes, what kind of “syncing” do you mean that you need? You just open it, right? So what would the ‘utility’ do?
There is no real ‘syncing’ involved, because all versions of Scrivener read the same files. You just copy the files from one to the other. So what do you need the 'utilit’y for? 
I don’t get the anti-Dropbox brigade. - It works.
Yes they had a security issue a while back, but then so have MS, Google, Yahoo, it’s an evolving field. Reality though, most breaches are a result of poor password/security practices by customers.
For instance, the iCloud hack, nothing to do with a failure on Apple’s part. Customers using easy to guess passwords across multiple platforms. Breach one with a phishing email and you’ve got the lot.
Dropbox are on face value, more inclined towards privacy that Google, Tahoo, Facebook, and reasonably password security makes it as secure as most anything commercially available.
The Dropbox/iTunes combo gives two options which seems to satisfy most needs.
As the L&L team have said, if you don’t like that ask Apple for a refund. They are extremely co-operative that way.
with all due respect and no offense intended. Do you even know what syncing is ?
Lets end this discussion here. Its not gonna lead anywhere. LL knows what I am talking about. You obviously don’t.
cheerio
so, because they ALL scoop and market private customer data that makes it OK ? They can only do that because you and others let them do it and you are using their products. Especially the free ones. A while back ? Are you following the international tug of war on online privacy at all, or where have you obtained the face value ? A while back ?
I said at another post earlier. I don’t have to use MS, Google, Yahoo, FB, Twitter, Linkedn, Snapchat, Whatsup and the other data vultures. They are nowhere in my workflow so it is MY choice if I use them and pay for it with my data. If I am forced to use them then that’s a different story. And exactly that’s what we have here with Dropbox and Scrivener. And there is no beautification of that situation. We are being mandated to use Dropbox if we want to have a way to Sync our Scrivener projects between platforms.
Thanks for my morning laugh . More inclined. I’ll take that to heart even though I think your and my inclinometer are showing different results. Sort of like a sheep raised and living in a Wolf-pack, right ?
There is no SYNC via iTunes. Its copying complete project files. Why don’t you go and work on one of your projects on your phone, pad and laptop, just make one change in each file, and then SYNC via iTunes. Then come back and we talk again. There is NO needs met of any non-Dropbox user !!!
I know you want me to go away so you don’t have to think about what Dropbox does to you . How often do I have to say that I don’t want a refund. I love Scrivener, why shouldn’t I voice my dissatisfaction if the new Scrivener car only runs if I buy a steering wheel from Dropbox and agree to their business practices .
'nuff said
Completely copying the project across is still synchronization at the project level (the minimum level necessary for the fidelity of a Scrivener project) even if the data copied is not as granular as you would like. It’s merely a brute-force synchronization.
You’re confusing the goal with the mechanism(s) required to achieve that goal.
All synchronization is, at the end of the day, is “Does the object in location A match the object in location B?” That’s the goal.
The mechanisms used by sync services such as Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, etc. tend to be ones that try to minimize the amount of data sent over the wire by only copying what has changed. That’s a worthy design goal for modern infrastructure – keep the bits sent over limited data connections to the minimum possible. But that is not an absolute REQUIREMENT for a synchronization solution. These services use the file as the most granular object they look at – if you change one byte in the file, the whole file gets copied. Synchronization services used for other purposes can go even more granular – block level for disk file systems, even byte-level for really exotic stuff – but for Scrivener, file level is adequate (as long as you get all the files in the project).
However, not all sync services are created equal. iTunes offers a rudimentary sync service, but it doesn’t offer file-level granularity. It still gets the project synchronized between desktop and mobile device, however. And L&L has spent a lot of time explaining the technical reasons why Dropbox is the only alternative to iTunes in Scrivener – the other services work in such a fashion that they are far more likely to cause corruption to project files. Most people don’t have the same issues with Dropbox that you do, so the engineering decision L&L made is the right one for them.
This wasn’t a choice between Dropbox and some other service. This was a choice between Dropbox and nothing (other than iTunes), because despite what you think about their service, at the end of the day it’s the only one that gets the bits synched without breaking them. It doesn’t matter how ideologically superior other services are if they break your data on a regular basis.
What you’re really asking for (demanding, really) is that L&L completely re-architect Scrivener’s file format, which would violate some of the basic design goals and features that are possible in today’s Scrivener without offering any sort of recompense for the users who don’t care about mobile synchronization. Your demands would affect ALL of Scrivener’s users, and mostly in a bad way.
You can make that decision for yourself. You can’t make that for the rest of us.
It’s not that anyone wants you to go away – it’s that we want you to acknowledge that your particular concerns don’t somehow make you morally superior to the rest of the L&L user base and certainly don’t give you the right to keep badgering L&L and the rest of us on this subject. You’ve asked. L&L has responded. If you’re not happy with that, join the rest of us who have some aspect of Scrivener we’d like to see changed but L&L has heard our views and decided otherwise. And then we continue using it without complaining. Using Dropbox doesn’t make us stupid – it simply means that we don’t have the same set of priorities and concerns you do.
Could all parties to this thread stay away from personalities and ideology, please?
Choice of sync services is a matter of balancing tradeoffs among an individual’s priorities. It is not an indicator of an individual’s ethics or lack thereof.
Katherine