seeing who opened your shared files?
Answered
Does anyone know how to see who you sent shared files and also who has opened or downloaded them?
I see where you go to property - access stats but it only says where and when it was downloaded or previed. But not a specific person.
Would appreciate the help! Thank you!
-
Hi , when you just see a date and location, it's because the person who previewed was not logged in to Box. So literally the only thing Box knows is their IP address and when they accessed the file.
Are you an admin on your Box instance? If you are, you can use the Reporting console to (a) find out the exact IP address of the person who accessed the file, which might be useful if you have another way to correlate IP addresses to individual people (e.g. you could look in your email logs as well -- note that this is a sketchy method, because everyone sharing an office may have the same public IP, and IPs for home/mobile users are transient), and (b) find out the identity of the person who created the shared link originally, though you don't necessarily know who all used it once it was created.
If you are a user, you can ask your IT department to do the above. Also in the future you can change the folder settings on critical folders you own. Scroll down in this article to the "Can I turn off shared links or certain access levels across my entire account? How do I adjust my settings?" section - about 1/3 of the way down the page.
-
As always, is spot-on with her reply.
-- To add on, the only time that Access Stats will show you a location/IP address instead of a user's name/email is when the link for the file is set to 'People with the link' -- that's the only link security level that doesn't require the user to be logged into Box to view the file. Both other security levels ('People in your company' and 'People in the folder') both require the user to be logged into Box, so we can always track their name/email.
Hope that provides some more clarity too!
-
,
If a shared link is set to "People with the link", i.e., open access, they will not be asked to log in. The only way to capture the email of someone accessing a file from a shared link is if they log in. Login is forced if the access level is "People in your company" or "People in this folder". You can authorize shared links to become collaboration 'self-invite' links. This will require the user to log in with their Box account (and create one if they don't have one). Then the user will be a collaborator. Any of these methods will capture who previewed or downloaded the file. Short of that, an open access link has no way to capture who accessed it.
HTH,
Bob
-
,
I've been a Box admin for almost six years and I have no memory of what your user describes. The only thing that remotely resembles 'registering your email' in Box that I am aware of is the upload embed widget. When you create that widget you can require a user enter their email so it captures who uploaded the document. Clearly that is not related to shared links and file access. The simple fact is that there is no way for a user clicking an open link to input anything (other than a password if you set it).
Perhaps others on the forum can think of something else.
Bob
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
7 comments