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Mainly just trying to say that not all secret URL approaches are security theatre. Though Zoom's approach definitely is!

Totally agree that in the long term secret URLs can end up being a risk. They're so easily leaked and URLs themselves often aren't treated securely. I'm sure many GSuite/Dropbox corp admins forbid them. Though for many personal situations IMHO a secret URL is a perfect fit.

Hah, that Dropbox referrer issue you mention brings back memories! I recall the annoying challenges involved in securing that in a way that still let users view raw files/previews in browser without just forcing the content to be downloaded.(And this was in a world before the Referrer-Policy header)




Hey, you didn't work there by any chance did you? I really loved the old "Public" folder and agree those direct-to-raw-file links were super convenient (when used appropriately of course!)


long ago :-)

You can still get links directly to raw files...mostly! Just use the very under-advertised "?raw=1" param on a shared link. For example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9i4696v9kqewoyw/Screenshot%202020-...

(does a redirect, and won't work for HTML. And some content like PDFs are served from locked down temporary URLs so that that referrer is useless of course)




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