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Forum Discussion
Linux users can delete folders (including content) that are not shared with them
Dropbox Business Standard with multiple users. Folders that are not shared with a user still show as an empty folder for that user. They can access the folder but not the files - it looks like an emp...
Walter
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHey asnell, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Can you please clarify if those are team folders, shared folders or personal folders perhaps?
Are all members of the team noticing this or a specific one or a team admin?
If you could also share some screenshots so that we can have a visual too, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks!
Hi Walter,
This happens with shared folders, created as shown in first image.
The following images show two Linux computers. The one on the left is the user with shared access, the one on the right does not have shared access. These show command line but the same happens when deleting the folder using a file manager. The folder, which appears empty, can be deleted by the user without shared access.
The shared folder "notforall" has a file "testfile" in it.
This happens with multiple Linux machines I have here running Ubuntu 22.04 and Linux Mint 21. It happens the same with different users. It does not happen with Windows computers running the same users, they get access denied.
Thank you.
Andrew
- Walter
Thanks for the additional information and the screenshots too asnell - much appreciated.
It sounds like you may have set your top level folders to be editable by all team members - could it be that what's causing this?
If you choose Everyone, you can either use the Content page, the All files page, or the desktop app to manage the top level of the team space as outlined here.
Thank you, I'll have a read through that shortly as it may help.
I have investigated more and in all Linux distros I have checked, an empty directory can be deleted even if the user doesn't have write access. So DropBox is showing the folder but, because the user doesn't have access to the content it is empty. The write attribute is cleared so in theory a user can't do anything with it, and that works in Windows. In Linux a user can delete such an empty directory, even without write access. This deletion then gets synchronised by the Dropbox desktop client and removed from other users who do (or did) have shared access.
I have been on to Dropbox support about it and they have passed it on to somebody else. I can work round the problem now I know about it and what is causing it.
Thanks again for your attention.
