[HN Gopher] Dropbox keeps threatening to delete my files
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       Dropbox keeps threatening to delete my files
        
       Author : khromov
       Score  : 25 points
       Date   : 2024-09-20 21:36 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (khromov.se)
 (TXT) w3m dump (khromov.se)
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | you have to periodically login or good bye data
        
       | JonChesterfield wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | max-m wrote:
         | 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 ...
        
           | dunham wrote:
           | I was clearing out Dropbox when I moved away from it, and it
           | _wouldn't_ let me delete my copy of `tex.web`, because it
           | thought it was some sort of special dropbox file. (It was the
           | source to TeX.)
        
         | black_puppydog wrote:
         | Pfff... I think you can easily replicate that UX with an ftp
         | server and CVS. :D
        
           | karamanolev wrote:
           | Reading about his experience, you can replicate the Dropbox
           | behavior with an rm -rf :D ftp and CVS would be actually
           | functional...
        
       | makeitdouble wrote:
       | 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       | way out of date, it's still an additional copy.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 ?
        
       | rnd0 wrote:
       | Dropbox is insane, they expect this to motivate me to give them
       | money? Ha! I took everything off of them years and years ago.
        
       | arenaninja wrote:
       | 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?
        
       | laluser wrote:
       | What do you expect to happen? Continue to host your data for
       | free? This is such an odd thing to write about.
        
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       (page generated 2024-09-20 23:01 UTC)