Nuffield Dropbox accounts are offered to current employees of the College on contracts at least one year, plus all Nuffield PPRFs. However, those outside of this category may make a case to the Finance department regarding charging the licence – at the time of writing, £216 annually – to their research allowance.

 

 

If you have a paid account that is approaching its renewal date, please get in touch and we may be able to 'adopt' your account. (Don't worry, all of your sharing settings are preserved.) When you get in touch, please let us know if the College reimbursed you previously for that account, and when it is due for renewal.

Yes, if you are eligible (see above).

All of your sharing settings are preserved. Your existing files and folders are NOT automatically shared with Nuffield colleagues. Neither are any new files and folders you create.

There are no stipulations/controls over who you can share with. Your data will be stored in the EU, which is better (i.e. legal) if you have any personal data stored. The IT department has access to some automatic reports which can tell us about any open-ended or very long term shares (which go against Nuffield's and the University guidance on sharing data). These could be flagged in audits from time to time. Any follow-up is likely to focus on admin staff, however.

The short answer previously was a definite NO.

Nearly everyone has a little personal data in their files. With data stored in the EU, the situation is better with regard to GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. However, Dropbox works really well with encryption solutions such as Boxcryptor. (See our page on using Dropbox with Boxcryptor). If data gets encrypted as it is added to Dropbox, you are probably in the clear and legal.

You cannot ask for the data in personal accounts (whether paid for or free) to be stored only in the EU. The data in the Nuffield College accounts is stored on Dropbox servers in the EU.

Others in College will NOT be able to see your data unless you've deliberately shared it with them.

Even the College’s IT department under all but the most exceptional circumstances can't see your data (but see the FAQ below).

Nuffield IT will be able to help with sharing, and password problems, nevertheless, and (with your direct co-operation) version control.

In short, Nuffield IT cannot see your data in College Dropbox accounts.  But they may be able to help if you run into problems.

More detail:

There are some reports which may show folder names and sometimes file names (but never their content).  e.g. if you had a folder called "GingerTheCat" and which has been shared with Grandma without an end date to the share, Nuffield IT may possibly see the name "GingerTheCat" if an audit was carried out specifically looking for open-ended folder sharing (which is a known Information Security problem).  However, the IT department would probably not know if the folder was empty or if it contained 1000 photos of Ginger.

Exceptionally, if you run into some extreme problems (e.g. files deleted accidentally which you need to get back, or you can't stop accidentally sharing with someone you don't want to etc. etc.) you may invite IT support to have a look at your content.

In order to assist with very difficult problems, senior IT - after getting your permission, and ideally in your presence - can use a Dropbox function of 'Sign in as Member'.  You will receive a notification that this has happened (see links alongside).

At the time of writing, Nuffield IT has never done this, except as a test to get the screen shots displayed here.

Firstly storage is essentially unlimited and no-one will see your files unless you’ve deliberately shared them with them. (Not even the IT team.) Secondly, it is easy to have a 'personal' and a ‘work’ Dropbox account and to switch between the two with one or two clicks, without signing out. (Exception: Super-advanced users who write scripts to work with their data in Dropbox – e.g. using R – you may find that the script only works with one account at a time.) So you could separate your (Nuffield) work from your personal if you wanted to.

That’s what Dropbox say. We even checked with them regarding very large amounts (terabytes) of research data. That’s fine, and would not break any acceptable use policy. The only thing that we’d recommend is considering whether or not you need to encrypt the data ‘on the way in' to Dropbox. A product like Boxcryptor may work for you. And look carefully at your ‘synching’ settings if you have a lot of data.

It is easy for Nuffield IT to "offboard" people if they are leaving. Here are some details from Dropbox.

Don't worry about the warning about losing access to 'team folders'. These won't be your folders (they are just things that we may use to share to all College Dropbox users - e.g. logos, PowerPoint templates etc.). You may see warnings there about sharing settings being preserved. This - for most people - is exactly what you'd want though (e.g. If you'd shared a folder or document with a few Nuffield fellows and another contact at Harvard, once your account is 'cut loose' from Nuffield that folder/file would still be shared with the Nuffield people and your Harvard contact).

One minor problem that might need to be addressed when you are converted [back] to a Free/basic account is that you may be over-quota in terms of file space.  This may affect the syncing of any new files you add, but you will still be able to access any files already within your account. Your choice will be to either delete files to create space (and get under the quota for free accounts) or to upgrade to a plus/pro account. Here is a comparison of Dropbox accounts that may be available to you.

If your Dropbox username or email address is first.last@nuffield.ox.ac.uk, removing you from the corporate account would not immediately change that, so don't forget to change your email address with Dropbox before you lose access to your email, at the point of your departure from the University.

Dropbox is a very popular way of sharing files with other colleagues and collaborators.  However, it isn't the only way.

Consider using some of the University services for sharing files. Note that you can use OneDrive to share with external people in a read-only or read-write collaboration.

There are also Oxfile for transferring large files, and other collaboration tools provided by the University.