14 DAY TRIAL // Dropbox is pushing a fresh set of rules along with its brand new Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and online Dropbox for Business Agreements. The updates will be effective on March 24, 2014, more than a month from now.
The company has added arbitration clauses to the Terms of Service for the business-oriented service. “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,” Dropbox writes.
Of course, it’s possible to opt out of this feature without any problems, but anyone who wants this must fill out a quick form.
The new Terms of Service have also lost some of their wooden language and the company has updated everything to better match the permissions that users give with the features they 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,” Dropbox says.
Dropbox has also made it a lot more easy to understand the company’s Privacy Policy and how it handles user information. A section has been added to explain the new Government Data Requests Principles.
Mailbox will from now on fall under the same Terms of Service and Privacy Policy as the rest of the tools offered by Dropbox, almost a year after it was launched.
The specific advancements made by Dropbox for Business are also more prominent in the new policies revealed by the company.
“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,” Dropbox writes.
Users should be receiving emails in the next few days with more details.
For those of you who actually read contracts before signing them, you can check out the full Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Business Agreement.