How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795 • Hacker News Board

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#131

Post by mikevm » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

wildmXranat wrote: post #117

edanm wrote: post #107

Another Dropbox horror story: My colleague lost most of his Dropbox folder last week, and wasn't able to recover everything. What happened: he had Dropbox synced to 2 computers, but one of them hadn't been used in a while. He turned on the old computer, and apparently, for some reason, Dropbox decided that the fact that many files weren't there was because they were deleted. Of course, the files weren't there because…

So the silver lining is still that they came through and restored the data, aside from the fact that the old and presumably really old Dropbox client on it went haywire. Yes, Dropbox is free and no I don't expect them to have a file retention guarantee that safeguards my stuff against nuclear holocaust, but I feel for you friend. In this case, storing files is all that Dropbox does. If my harddrive decided to do that…

Dropbox is not necessarily free, some people do pay for more storage.

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#132

Post by jonknee » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #114

edanm wrote: post #107

Another Dropbox horror story: My colleague lost most of his Dropbox folder last week, and wasn't able to recover everything. What happened: he had Dropbox synced to 2 computers, but one of them hadn't been used in a while. He turned on the old computer, and apparently, for some reason, Dropbox decided that the fact that many files weren't there was because they were deleted. Of course, the files weren't there because…

While I feel for your colleague, I have to wonder why he didn't have a backup if these files were important enough to spend several days trying to get them back.[1] [1] http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html

Dropbox says "Your files are safe" and for most people operates as a better backup than they can do on their own (it's offsite for starters). Dropbox encourages this behavior:

https://www.dropbox.com/tour/1

> You can relax knowing that Dropbox always has you covered, and none of your stuff will ever be lost.

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#133

Post by Yoni1 » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:12 PM UTC

sean_lynch wrote: post #119

Hey guys - Dropbox product manager here, tl;dr: The scenario described by the OP is now less likely to occur. Since October, individual Dropbox users are encouraged to create separate accounts when invited to a Team and warned that Teams admins will have control over the account. We want individual and Team Dropbox users to have the best possible experience. Some users want to migrate their personal accounts into a T…

Hey, OP here -

First of all, in Dropbox's defense, I probably did not give you guys enough time to respond before going public with this (also, living in Israel I sometimes forget that Sunday is a weekend for most people in the world). I apologize for that. I am not a journalist/blogger, and I was driven more by my emotions than by "journalistic ethics" (?) when submitting to HN.

Second, according to your support email (updated the original post with it) it looks like my particular case is going to be resolved. However, it does not seem to resolve the malicious use case I hinted at (and which people on HN did not seem to want to discuss that much): Give someone a terabyte as a gift, and then delete their account. In fact, from the support email it seems like it's even worse: The support staff will need the team admin to approve the account re-enabling. In the malicious case, the admin would not approve.

[EDIT: Recalled a third point I wanted to make.] Third, regarding what you said "it's not possible for us to differentiate between Team data and personal stuff in the same account". I simply don't understand why this is true. Maybe the general case is not like mine, but my Dropbox folder just has a bunch of subfolders, exactly one of which belongs to the "team". Is it possible that certain folders have mixed personal-and-team content? How does that even work? If you saw my account (I don't know if you can... but your code can) it would be blatantly obvious which folders (all but one) are personal.

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#134

Post by jonknee » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:13 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #20

Yoni1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think making a new account just for your Teams access is very convenient. The desktop application is only associated with 1 account at a time. So (until Dropbox changes something) there does not seem to be a good solution to your question.

Have your startup get you a separate computer. Not mixing work and personal life extends to not doing work development on your personal machine or vice versa.

While they're at it, add in an apartment so that your work computer is not kept at a private residence...

It sounds like this was a summer internship, having to lug a separate computer around because Dropbox doesn't support separate accounts seems like a huge work around. The whole point of Dropbox is that the files are wherever you need them.

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#135

Post by josso » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:24 PM UTC

johnrob wrote: post #127

sean_lynch wrote: post #119

Hey guys - Dropbox product manager here, tl;dr: The scenario described by the OP is now less likely to occur. Since October, individual Dropbox users are encouraged to create separate accounts when invited to a Team and warned that Teams admins will have control over the account. We want individual and Team Dropbox users to have the best possible experience. Some users want to migrate their personal accounts into a T…

Out of pure curiosity, why is it that the OP's original requests for help were ignored? Is it recommended that to get better support you should make a public case of it? A lot of larger companies seem to operate this way.

Honestly, OP didn't give them enough time to respond. OP said that it was only yesterday that the team revoked his account. I could imagine that given it was both a sunday and a day or two before Christmas (depending on where you are) that the Dropbox support probably wasn't fully staffed.

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#136

Post by lucaspiller » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:25 PM UTC

justjimmy wrote: post #129

sean_lynch wrote: post #119

Hey guys - Dropbox product manager here, tl;dr: The scenario described by the OP is now less likely to occur. Since October, individual Dropbox users are encouraged to create separate accounts when invited to a Team and warned that Teams admins will have control over the account. We want individual and Team Dropbox users to have the best possible experience. Some users want to migrate their personal accounts into a T…

I'm curious, why don't the Company doesn't just share the folders with the Individual and revoke access to the shared folder when the Individual leaves? You won't have to combine to the Personal / Team together. And make it so that the shared folders doesn't count towards the Individual's account space limit. Bam. Problem solved (?)

That's what we do. What are the advantages of the Team plan over this?

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#137

Post by mikeash » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:28 PM UTC

drivers99 wrote: post #125

mikeash wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People frequently confuse file syncing facilities with backup facilities, and I don't think Dropbox does much to clarify which one they are. Although, I thought Dropbox kept a history on each file going back a month.....

Shoot. I've been thinking of dropbox as my backup. Now I wonder what would qualify as backup considering I want it to be automated and preferably not require me to write to media like DVDs. (Time Machine seems to be doing the trick on the Mac side, although... having all the backup media connected to the machine it's backing up means it's susceptible to simultaneous deletion, as well not being offsite means it is sus…

I use Backblaze. I have restored a few small files from them. I've never had to do the whole system, but I expect it to work well from what I've heard. Maybe I should actually test it....

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#138

Post by Yoni1 » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:29 PM UTC

lucaspiller wrote: post #136

justjimmy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, why don't the Company doesn't just share the folders with the Individual and revoke access to the shared folder when the Individual leaves? You won't have to combine to the Personal / Team together. And make it so that the shared folders doesn't count towards the Individual's account space limit. Bam. Problem solved (?)

That's what we do. What are the advantages of the Team plan over this?

A lot more storage and some more features.

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#139

Post by joering2 » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:30 PM UTC

sean_lynch wrote: post #119

Hey guys - Dropbox product manager here, tl;dr: The scenario described by the OP is now less likely to occur. Since October, individual Dropbox users are encouraged to create separate accounts when invited to a Team and warned that Teams admins will have control over the account. We want individual and Team Dropbox users to have the best possible experience. Some users want to migrate their personal accounts into a T…

> Disabled accounts are not immediately deleted: We can work with Teams admins and users to sort out account issues and recover users’ files.

Wait a sec, does this mean when I delete my files they are ... not being deleted?

> We’ve contacted the OP to help resolve his case and are sorry for any pain this caused!

Great, good for him. So basically next time when I or others have problems with Dropbox, post a rant about it and pray it will get to #1 spot on HN to get customer support response? Ok, dully noted, thanks.

Re: How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795

#140

Post by mikeash » Mon, Dec 24, 2012, 6:30 PM UTC

sean_lynch wrote: post #119

Hey guys - Dropbox product manager here, tl;dr: The scenario described by the OP is now less likely to occur. Since October, individual Dropbox users are encouraged to create separate accounts when invited to a Team and warned that Teams admins will have control over the account. We want individual and Team Dropbox users to have the best possible experience. Some users want to migrate their personal accounts into a T…

Sounds like you ought to figure out why people want to merge their personal accounts, and then implement that functionality in a way that doesn't require merging such that it's not possible to reverse the change afterwards.

This may be way harder than I make it sound, since I don't know about the hurdles this would face. But that does seem like the place to aim.