Dropbox keeps threatening to delete my files

[aborsy]

The post is strange (even if not serious). Like, what do you expect?

If the provider deletes data in this situation, people complain. If the provider hosts data for free, there are people who still complain (even accuse the provider with dark patterns). Perhaps that’s why the focus is becoming enterprise customers.

[Dylan16807]

> Like, what do you expect?

Fewer empty threats. A lot fewer.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Who is complaining that their storage provider kept a promise to not delete customer data?

[crossroadsguy]

I expect that if they want to delete that data then they should own up and publicly declare so. Back off from the promise publicly.

Or say that “yeah, we say that from time to time, but we don’t really mean that lol”.

Because converting a customer into a paying customer with the promise of “won’t delete even if you stop paying” is a service promise.

[JonChesterfield]

Dropbox synced with an empty folder, i.e. deleted everything. I didn't notice for over 30 days which was the cutoff for their historical files. Thus my easy off-site copy which I was previously very attached to effectively deleted everything. I did not go back.

[renewiltord]

This is a classic lesson that everyone learns called Sync Is Not Backup. Everyone learns it eventually and then writes a blog post on it. It used to be a classic HN meme:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4704086

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27157427

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33008837

And every storage company tells a tale of backup vs sync:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-backup-vs-cloud-sync/

[max-m]

Something similar happened to me once. I still don't know what exactly happened, but in Dropbox some files were deleted, I still had my local copy, but then Dropbox synced the file deletions and I didn't notice. Only when it was too late did I notice that files were gone and their support was unable to help. I think I managed to recover some files with one of the NTFS "undelete" tools, but that was probably the day I started to treat "the cloud" differently. Nowadays I don't even know what's still in my Dropbox ...

[robmsmt]

I also had exactly the same experience. I ended up losing lots of documents.

[black_puppydog]

Pfff... I think you can easily replicate that UX with an ftp server and CVS. :D

[nmstoker]

I actually haven't noticed but they stopped bothering me about a year ago.

There used to be endless "Dropbox has stopped syncing" emails - brought on due to shared photos from a friend's account taking me over the free limit, even though the actual files i have are under the limit. They sent a massive number of email variants since this first triggered back in 2016, so that's roughly 7+ years before they got the message that I wasn't going to fall for it!

[Brajeshwar]

I've been a Dropbox user for a long time with the 2TB option.

However, this is a different story and is of Flickr. I have been on Flickr since its early days and had many photos with a pro account. Quite a few apps on Flickr used to use my collection as a way to stress test their applications. My collections were also popular; I had 11+ million views before I abandoned it. I have done my take-out, backup, and downgraded.

The thing is, I found no option to easily delete all the photos while keeping the account for posterity. There is no mass-delete option. So, I was hoping that by violating their usage, they would delete my photos. Hell No, they have kept threatening me for the past many years but haven't deleted it yet.

[crossroadsguy]

Just curious — ever tried reaching out to the customer care? :-)

I mean I can’t imagine them not being happy about not having to pay for the hosting, unless they have a clear way of monetising that data (AI/etc and all that).

[laluser]

What do you expect to happen? Continue to host your data for free? This is such an odd thing to write about.

[nimih]

I think the author may not be entirely serious, and may even have been attempting to achieve some level of humor or personal catharsis with their writing.

[surgical_fire]

Perhaps Dropbox shouldn't have promised to keep the files forever then?

[justusthane]

It doesn’t seem like the author is upset about this, just interested in seeing what the eventual outcome is. It is interesting to see the tension in their emails between wanting to get the user back as a subscriber and not wanting to continue to host their files for free.

[arcatech]

That’s literally what they said they would do.

[Larrikin]

Companies that offer things for free, I fully expect for them to keep them free forever. If the pay solution is worth it I'll pay.

When they start changing the contract, I find an alternative and use the service as much as I can. My Dropbox is fully backed up but has been full for years and it doesn't matter to me any more.

[ventegus]

Why not?

Many of us host terabytes of opaque data on platforms like GitHub without ever paying or facing deletion threats.

[Andrex]

My question is whether the cost of creating and sending all these emails outweigh the Dropbox recidivism they induce.

Do these emails actually create value or is it a just way to make the company feel better about losing customers?

[stevage]

I think he expects them to follow through with the threat.

[ddtaylor]

Should the company not be expected to uphold their promise that they sold him and charged him for?

[edflsafoiewq]

Make good on the threat I suppose.

[neilv]

Is Dropbox this tacky with all users, or only with users who started it (by dumping 1TB on them, because "why wouldn't I")?

[kadoban]

I have the impression that their sales/renewal side is kind of nasty.

I have a vanity domain for myself, and someone from their sales started cold-emailing me to sell me some crazy enterprise plan. After several being ignored they sent a real angry one demanding to be forwarded to someone else at my org (which, to be clear, did not exist).

Can't imagine what real companies get from them if just having a domain name was enough to get that.

[Dylan16807]

These are just people that cancelled, no shenanigans. Dropbox doesn't let you add huge amounts, if there's 1TB there is was almost always legitimate data.

[ryankrage77]

I've been recieving these for 5-6 years now. Last I checked, they haven't deleted my stuff, which is pretty nice of them.

[netsharc]

Surprisingly, them keeping your (and the author's, and other abandoners') files probably makes more business sense than deleting them: the files probably don't cost that much to store (my hunch is most abandoners don't have TB's of data), and since they all still have an account, DropBox can spam them with these threats and maybe some percentage of them do return, allowing DB to make money off them.

If the files get deleted, both sides know it'll be the end of their user-provider relationship.

[charlie0]

I remember the days when Dropbox was good. It worked exactly as advertised. Syncing data to the cloud and between my machines. All was well.

Then things changed. Their client got really heavy, constant pushes to use other functionality like docs, etc. CPU usage went up and it would slow down my computer. I eventually ended up uninstalling the whole thing.

[makeitdouble]

Been receiving those for years now, as I fully moved to Google Drive + 2 local copies.

The weird part of it:

- I'll never actively delete that account because even if it's way out of date, it's still an additional copy. Beyond laziness, I've counter incentives to not do it.

- GDPR directives would probably allow them to delete the account after X years of inactivity, it clearly hasn't happened. Or there's still some of my scripts logging in somewhere even as it doesn't sync anything ? Or they didn't flag me as EU user and are now lost on what they can do ?

[RockRobotRock]

You could buy a 2TB hard drive from eBay for $20 in the time it took you to write this.

[gcr]

Cloud storage just isn’t for me.

I could speak of the time when Google drive URL-encoded the names of all of my files turning spaces into %20s…

Have rolled the dice on offsite hard drive storage so far and been fairly happy, though I’m certainly due a disaster someday.

[rnd0]

Dropbox is insane, they expect this to motivate me to give them money? Ha! I took everything off of them years and years ago.

[layman51]

I will note that Dropbox has changed so much from when I first learned of their service. They seem very focused on providing solutions to businesses now compared to back then when it seemed more like a product for individual users.

[poochkoishi728]

I'm willing to bet they make $100K+ every round they send these out. Everyone has to consider at least what to do with the email (ignore? accept if it's useful again? maybe just to stop getting bugged)

[AStonesThrow]

https://xkcd.com/1150/

[southernplaces7]

The simple solution here is to simply not use Dropbox, or for that matter any service with bad customer service and the asserted right to scan through your files stored with them (looking at you too Google). Why even bother trusting them with that terabyte of data?

Edit: What a shit show of passive aggressive dark patterns from the company. This is grossly common among today's tech giants, and laughably absurd, especially when their CEOs go on the media lecture circuit to talk about things like social responsibility and treating users with respect.

[ryandrake]

Are they still demanding "accessibility" permission on macOS computers, giving them broad powers to run roughshod over your system? That's the thing I most remember about trying Dropbox, their belligerent installer.

[arenaninja]

I think the author's premise is flawed even if the post comes off as good natured fun :)

I doubt they will host your content graveyard for free in perpetuity. I've seen Google get rid of more for less and given the horror stories and lack of recourse with the big G I would not trust them to do more than be my email provider (and I'm working on kicking that habit too).

That said it's pretty clear Dropbox policy changed and quoting a forum response from 6 years ago seems flimsy, maybe even disingenuous. That it's still the top response on Google surely says more about Google?

[amiga386]

> I doubt they will host your content graveyard for free

Given he says "I migrated away from Dropbox" and "I had no desire to reactivate my account" suggests that his data is doing just fine elsewhere and he doesn't mind if Dropbox deletes it or not, he's just laughing at the desperation of the begging spam he doesn't want.

[betaby]

Just setup an FTP server.

[fuzztester]

So?

[paulpauper]

you have to periodically login or good bye data

[stevage]

I do have to point out that cloud hosted storage creates CO2 emissions, so if you aren't actually using it, that's not ideal.

[hypeatei]

I mean, breathing does too so watch your workouts. Being more serious, I don't think micromanaging your own cloud storage would help that much. The cloud provider is going to have that storage deployed and available regardless.

[colordrops]

Why does anyone continue to use Dropbox?