For the company I work for, I created a shared DropBox folder back in 2013. I setup a Bitly shortened link for it so that anyone with this link can download and copy from our DropBox. They can not edit or upload. I will not post post the link here.
Today I clicked the Bitly link and got a DropBox error page. I logged into Bitly, found the shortcut, and copied the original DropBox URL it was pointing to and tried it directly. Same error, so I CAN'T blame Bitly. The DropBox error says:
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You can ask the person who shared the link to invite you directly. Just so you know, you're signed in as xxxxx@xx.com.
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The email address on the error is the one I use to log into DropBox. My profile icon is on the top-right of the page showing me I'm logged in. I am the only admin. I can click my icon and get to my home page and access the shared folder without problem. But no matter what browser I use, incognito mode or not, I can not get to the share to work directly.
I tried using an alternate shortcut using a different shortening service that I had created in recent years. That worked! I logged into that service and got the DropBox URL is was pointing to and compared it to the non-working one. The DropBox URL that worked is about twice as long as the one from 2013 that doesn't work. The one that worked is in the form of a query sting with "?" and "&" characters. The one that is broke is just a string of characters and forward slashes.
So, what changed on DropBox that the old share URL doesn't work? Is there anyway to get it to work?