Title: Unbeknownst to me, Dropbox phased out Public&#x2F; folders new accounts as of 31 July, 2010[1]. As an existing user I never noticed and continued to use my Public folder to distribute some little freeware apps.<p>Today I got an email saying,<p>&gt; We&#x27;re always looking to improve the Dropbox sharing experience... we&#x27;ll soon be ending support for the Public folder. Dropbox Pro users will be able to use the Public folder until September 1, 2017. After that date the files in your Public folder will become private, and links to these files will be deactivated. Your files will remain safe in Dropbox.<p>The part about links being &quot;deactivated&quot; is troubling. It is true that one could easily create new Dropbox &quot;shared links&quot; to the files one wants to share. However, bit.ly links and similar are forever! There is no way to redirect or edit &quot;bit.ly&#x2F;my_great_freebie&quot; or change &quot;goo.gl&#x2F;aRgle&quot; to point to a different place. And once you&#x27;ve made such links public, you have no control over where they are re-posted and no idea who might try to use them in the future.<p>So a major unanswered question is, after 1-9-17, what will a user see when following a link to a now-private file or folder? Will there be any way for the owner to customize that from the default 4xx error page -- or possibly even redirect it?<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4114474
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