You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Sync errors from non-dropbox sync location, potential intellectual property issue?
After the update that prevents syncing files and folders with special characters, I am now seeing 100 sync errors. All of them are located in my C:\Users\{my user}\AppData\ directory. These all come from the AppData directory for the GitHub desktop application. I am unfamiliar with the degree this may have potential to infringe on intellectual property rights for private code repositories. But I am concerned by the Dropbox client behavior. If it is accessing AppData without my knowledge, is it also accessing the GitHub root directory in My Documents that contains proprietary code?
My Dropbox sync folder is located on another physical drive. I do not sync any files or directories on the C drive and have turned off as many features as I am allowed to through the Dropbox client application. Even if this were related to indexing for photo and video sync, shouldn't the app be accessing those specific directories and paths? The errors I'm seeing are in a directory for a completely unrelated application. I also don't understand why the Dropbox client would want or need to access that location, given it is used in Windows for user specific data for apps and programs. The Dropbox specific path I can understand, but why directories for other installed applications?
Can anyone explain why the application is behaving like this, and is there a resource for the minimum set of permissions required for file sync? If I were to create a Windows user with no permissions to anything, and apply that to directories and services, what locations and minimum permissions are required for the Dropbox client to run correctly?
I can't now. I looked at the notification again this morning and clicked "close", just being curious as to whether it would return immediately or wait for the latest changes. It looks like it hasn't returned at all. I don't understand why.
Is it possible that the notification message is generated from an old copy of the GitHub app settings in my Dropbox folder, but the notification links to the AppData directory by default when it presents the message? I didn't see a full path to the specific files, only the containing directory or file name are displayed, just like any other sync issue.
I realize I'm theory crafting the behavior but in absence of more detail, maybe that gives engineering a place to look and assumes the simplest reason for the oddity. Maybe QA can try backing up the GitHub app settings and produce the same result. If that's the case, then this is entirely from having files with characters in file names and directories that are no longer supported by Dropbox.
I'll just mark it as closed.
