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

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

#51

Post by josso »

Had the exact same situation last year. Was interning at a startup for a couple of weeks. I joined their Team-DropBox and some time after leaving the startup, they (logically) revoked my access without either of us knowing what it would result in.

After an email back and forth with both the DropBox-Team-support and the startup, I got my account back in the exact same state as it was in, when my account got revoked. I still had all of the startups stuff but it no longer synced. As I was many GB over the limit of my free DropBox-account I deleted all the files belonging to the startup (which of course is the right thing to do).

I'm glad this is getting some attention, because it is clearly not working very well as it is right now. Hopefully DropBox will make the user experience better.

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

#52

Post by neya »

natural219 wrote: post #36
nr0mx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP says he did that: "I tried contacting Dropbox on twitter and using their site’s support contact form, and they have not yet gotten back to me."

There is a place for public notices of foul play by companies, certainly. Normally, though, those accounts garner my sympathy when they explain the full support story and get snubbed by a represenative, usually after at least some waiting. Not saying that the OP didn't wait plenty of time, but I would find his complaint more compelling if he would have mentioned how long ago he contacted them.

I presume you are a dropbox employee. You seem to be staunchly defending dropbox to everyone who argues in support of this 'issue'.

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

#53

Post by Wintamute »

natural219 wrote: post #37
danso wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I prefer this be resolved in the public arena, rather than on a case-by-case basis for everyone who encounters this problem. If the OP is accurate, then this is a problematic implementation detail that every corporate user should be aware of.

I give some leeway for problems that seem to be bugs rather than intentional features. I doubt Dropbox intended for your account to be deleted in this scenario.

The wording of their FAQ suggests they are aware of this. From the OP:

“If someday you leave the team, it may not be possible to convert your Teams account back to an individual account that you can access.”

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

#54

Post by adammulligan »

We had this happen over the summer to someone that left and were removed from the team. It was resolved by contacting Dropbox support, so I'm not sure why you've not had luck with that but then it is the holiday period. Dropbox's recent changes to how Teams Admins can manage connected accounts (which in my opinion are a bit excessive) might help with this process. Their ToS explains these changes but an email they sent round in October explains it better: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s5/sh/39bd6ae2-a0b6-41a9-87a4...

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

#55

Post by mblake »

Yoni1 wrote: post #18
xoail wrote: post #6

I can imagine why it is so hard to roll back to your old account once you leave a team. It might be best for companies to advise their employees to create separate dropbox account before joining a team.

If it's hard it's due to bad design. It could've been possible.

Bad design most likely. Looking more carefully at the link in the initial email they sent you: 'confirm_migrate?'. This almost gives it away.

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

#56

Post by adammulligan »

smellyfinger wrote: post #19

Would you also be able to get all of your enemies files? or would your enemy have to share all his folders with the team?

I believe with their new ToS admins can access any team member's files[1]

[1] https://www.evernote.com/shard/s5/sh/39bd6ae2-a0b6-41a9-87a4...

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

#57

Post by Wintamute »

gregpilling wrote: post #43
Yoni1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here - (in my story) the Teams account creator did not do this out of cruelty, they just didn't know this is what Dropbox does. I imagine very few people realize that this is how it works. What should've happened is this: revoke my access to the team folder and downgrade my account back to Free. (Then, annoy me and refuse to sync until I go down to 2GB of usage.) That would be good design.

If you find a way around this, please post the link. I have the problem from the team side. I don't want to do any damage to anyone, but I don't want to share anymore either.

In the meantime you should make sure that people you're sharing Teams with create a fresh free Dropbox account for that purpose, not their personal one. If they really need some folders on their personal account too I guess they could share a folder or two with their personal account?

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

#58

Post by SquareWheel »

niggler wrote: post #13

This is why I never trust services like Dropbox. It's painful to maintain backups manually but at least I can sleep well at night knowing that the only points of failure are within my control EDIT: because I realize its not completely obvious, I keep multiple backups with my own servers sitting in different data centers. I don't see how you could trust any external service to store data.

Are the backups local? You can't prevent against a flood, fire, or theft. Are the backups off-site? You can't protect against a company going bankrupt, somebody cutting the wrong wire, or your ISP farting.

Backups should be both local and off-site. Which is what Dropbox provides, actually.

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

#59

Post by aspir »

kmfrk wrote: post #29

Paging Google and Microsoft. Now's as good a time as any to promote your cloud storage services and help a guy out.

This very reason is actually why my company is migrating to Box. No one I work with is the type to jump ship on a company just for one feature, but this is a major liability. I'll still keep DB for my personal use, but my company had ~30 TB of Dropbox storage at the time.

Our account is a blip on their revenue radar, but if Dropbox wants to become a a truly monumental company, they'll need to do something to fix this. Being small business friendly isn't the same as "Enterprise friendly," but Dropbox is neither at this point.

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

#60

Post by jevinskie »

pearkes wrote: post #35
justinschuh wrote: post #17

Intermingling personal and work accounts is almost always a bad idea. I've seen colleagues get their personal accounts subpoenaed, have a firing result in loss of primary email/cell, or have really awkward communications show up in an IT audit. The overhead of maintaining separate accounts is very small (multi-profile browser, multi-account smartphone, etc.), and more than worth it given the liabilities. Beyond that,…

I recently bought a second laptop for home, even though it was common at the company I work for to use your computer for work and pleasure. Under California employment law, an employer can argue that they own anything created on company machines[1]. If you work on side projects, I think it's a worthy investment. [1] http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-...

Careful! I believe they can still claim any work that is related to the company's field. Or is that just something that is commonly included in employment contracts?
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