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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

#61

Post by devgutt »

danso wrote: post #34
natural219 wrote: post #16

This seems like an issue best resolved through Dropbox support, not through HN Soapbox support. Edit: My main point is that I come here to read Hacker News, not Some Other Guy's Support Problems. Treating every dropped use case as a public relations crisis is just an exercise in getting yourself worked up for no reason. If this is a real issue that affects multiple, real users, then I'm sure Dropbox will do something…

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.

Don't you think that the great majority of the problems should be solved publicly? Unless the problem has sensitive data I think there's no reason to use a one-to-one support channel.

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

#62

Post by jjoonathan »

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.

Confidential discussion with the company seems like the best option -- if you're Dropbox. To Dropbox's users, immediate and full disclosure is the best policy. The bug reporter needs to choose between these extremes based on the nature of the bug and I think you're oversimplifying matters by claiming the bug reporter should always cater to the company's interests (even if professional courtesy demands granting them some leniency).

Factors suggesting immediate disclosure is appropriate:

1) High benefit of informing users (high severity bug, easily avoided if you know about it)

2) Low impact of misinformation (most of us will check back to see how the story unfolds)

3) Bad faith on Dropbox's part (they knew about this, they knew how much their customers would benefit from disclosure, yet they failed to carry through)

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

#63

Post by Wintamute »

sumitngupta wrote: post #42

I've actually been through this twice now (its currently disabled from leaving the second company's Team account, I should have known better but I thought they would have "fixed" the issue by now). First time around they just needed my the guy at my last company to approve it being re-enabled (not sure why)... and waiting for that whole flow to start up again for this second time. I should have known better this time…

I guess its because by joining a Team you're being inducted into an "organisation" and then have access to all their private data. It'd be no good if every time somebody left a Team (say a freelancer) they take a copy of the organisations data with them. I'd imagine a Team account's data is encrypted too, so there's no way to decrypt it without an account that authenticates as a member of said Team ...

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

#64

Post by rgarcia »

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,…

The overhead of maintaining separate Dropbox accounts is pretty high IMO. There's no easy way to switch between accounts on the desktop client, an I'm pretty sure there's no way to be logged in to multiple accounts.

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

#65

Post by aspir »

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,…

As much as I agree with you, your examples prove how little "regular" users consider this. With technologies that are historically user-unfriendly, such as email, individuals may be aware of the importance of separating work and personal, especially because email is such an 'old' technology.

But, for something new, like cloud storage, and for a company like Dropbox, that prides itself in "just working," this is a critical feature oversight.

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

#66

Post by sumitngupta »

Wintamute wrote: post #63
sumitngupta wrote: post #42

I've actually been through this twice now (its currently disabled from leaving the second company's Team account, I should have known better but I thought they would have "fixed" the issue by now). First time around they just needed my the guy at my last company to approve it being re-enabled (not sure why)... and waiting for that whole flow to start up again for this second time. I should have known better this time…

I guess its because by joining a Team you're being inducted into an "organisation" and then have access to all their private data. It'd be no good if every time somebody left a Team (say a freelancer) they take a copy of the organisations data with them. I'd imagine a Team account's data is encrypted too, so there's no way to decrypt it without an account that authenticates as a member of said Team ...

Doesn't really work that way though cause I could just copy everything outside of my dropbox account on my personal machine. What I had expected to happen is all the Team priv's like a bigger size limit to be removed (I already had 50gigs before though.. curious if I'll get that back or have to repay) and the shared folders to magically disappear from along side all my personal folders. It really wasn't a huge deal this time around as I learned now to store all my password files and stuff through DB anymore as that boned me pretty hard the last time around.

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

#67

Post by justinschuh »

john-n wrote: post #25
DanBC wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revert this how? Ann has an individual account. She joins a team. She leaves the team, and Bob (the team account owner) revokes her access. Dropbox deletes all her accounts. What can dropbox do here; set Ann back as a member of that team? Bob (paying a lot of money) is not happy with that.

No, they just have to remove anns access to any team based information, same as she was prior to joining?

How do you do that? Once she joins the team, you have no way of knowing if something Ann created or modified belongs to the team or to her. This is the classic problem with "taint checking." Once you mix data across boundaries you have to assume it's tainted. I agree it's a crappy situation, but I can't see what Dropbox should change, other than make it very clear how this feature works to future customers. As a one-time thing, they could maybe get a PR win by helping this guy recover his data (if possible). However, that's not scalable, or a precedent they'd want to continue forward.

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

#68

Post by Oompa »

natural219 wrote: post #16

This seems like an issue best resolved through Dropbox support, not through HN Soapbox support. Edit: My main point is that I come here to read Hacker News, not Some Other Guy's Support Problems. Treating every dropped use case as a public relations crisis is just an exercise in getting yourself worked up for no reason. If this is a real issue that affects multiple, real users, then I'm sure Dropbox will do something…

This is how Dropbox supports teams. It's absolutely awful, and I hope more people are made aware of it, because they really need to fix it.

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

#69

Post by Yoni1 »

mblake wrote: post #55
Yoni1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't even notice that until now, and definitely not when I originally clicked the link :)

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

#70

Post by Oompa »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #12

At the risk of stating the obvious, that invitation email ought to be a bit more informative. Maybe, there ought to be an option to create a new account for use with that team.

What's sad is that the Dropbox desktop client doesn't support multiple accounts easily, so then you might as well use a different service, so you can have 2 clients installed that sync automatically.
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