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Forum Discussion
deleted folder re appeared after a couple of years
Something very weird just happened with my dropbox account. Out of nowhere, a folder which was deletec about 2 years ago re appeared on my dropbox. It has the files as they were, which makes me wonder why the hell dropbox is still keeping these files after a few years that they have been deleted?
First I thought it was a hack, but then I checked all my devices and what was accessing my account and indeed, everything was as it was before.
It makes me think this is a serious bug and on another note, why the hell is dropbox keeping data that was deleted 2 years ago?
I'll surprised, scared and angry at the same time. I'm not even sure where to begin! I'm now wondering about several of my clients that use dropbox in their business if the same happens.
Thanks everyone for your patience while we worked on a way to clean up the inadvertently restored files and folders. We've built a fix that will automatically return this content to the way it should be: deleted and out of your Dropbox. This will only impact the inadvertently restored files and folders, and only if you haven’t updated them. We’ll begin rolling out the fix to affected users’ accounts later today. We’re giving you a heads up here so you’re aware of why there may be changes to your Dropbox. Here’s a bit more information about the fix.
Will this affect my other files?
The fix will only impact the inadvertently restored files and folders. If you have edited the files or folders—by moving them or updating the content inside—they will stay in your Dropbox. You can still manually delete these files and folders if you don’t want them.What if I don’t want these files or folders removed?
While the fix will automatically take effect later today, you can contact our support team (dropbox.com/support) within 30 days and we’ll restore the files and folders for you. You won’t be able to restore on your own using the events page.Do I need to do anything?
We will automatically roll out the fix, you don’t need to do a thing. If you have questions or concerns, please write our support team at http://bit.ly/cm-support so that we can investigate your specific case. Your ticket will be prioritized by the team.Thanks again for your patience, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience and confusion we’ve caused.
Ross_SDropbox Staff
Thanks everyone for your patience while we worked on a way to clean up the inadvertently restored files and folders. We've built a fix that will automatically return this content to the way it should be: deleted and out of your Dropbox. This will only impact the inadvertently restored files and folders, and only if you haven’t updated them. We’ll begin rolling out the fix to affected users’ accounts later today. We’re giving you a heads up here so you’re aware of why there may be changes to your Dropbox. Here’s a bit more information about the fix.
Will this affect my other files?
The fix will only impact the inadvertently restored files and folders. If you have edited the files or folders—by moving them or updating the content inside—they will stay in your Dropbox. You can still manually delete these files and folders if you don’t want them.What if I don’t want these files or folders removed?
While the fix will automatically take effect later today, you can contact our support team (dropbox.com/support) within 30 days and we’ll restore the files and folders for you. You won’t be able to restore on your own using the events page.Do I need to do anything?
We will automatically roll out the fix, you don’t need to do a thing. If you have questions or concerns, please write our support team at http://bit.ly/cm-support so that we can investigate your specific case. Your ticket will be prioritized by the team.Thanks again for your patience, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience and confusion we’ve caused.
Thanks Ross,
We are glad Dropbox patched this problem. I have two short queries and hoping that you can reply.
I am sure some serious users may be having these questions on their minds too.
- For people having lots of folders, how to ensure that all the "un-dead" files & folders are purged. Right now the events section does not tell me any details if anything popped up.
- Has Dropbox ensured that previous versions of the file were not accidentally restored over legitimate files in their most recent versions.
The second question is more relevant since we have maybe worked on many files over the months & years and updated them with newer versions. Just because dropbox managed to revert all the zombie additions isnt enough. We have to be certain that the versions were right and/or they didn't delete legit file entirely from the folder index because it was affected i.e files missing because they were affected by the bug.
When we have several thousand files totalling to several GB's it is very hard to go and check them individually. We can't be even sure if the bug has been entirely quashed. Your response (even if bit technical) can help restore some faith in the bugfix.
- For people having lots of folders, how to ensure that all the "un-dead" files & folders are purged. Right now the events section does not tell me any details if anything popped up.
I am still seeing them - not sure how long the fix will take to be implemented?
Ross,
I have the same question asked by:
Ross, thanks for this. One thing, its unclear how to identify all those files that have reappeared. There are obvious top level folders that have reappeared, but how do I find files that may have reappeared somewhere inside a valid top level folder (that is a folders that was correctly in my dropbox just before the bug) if I have 100Ks of valid files and folders in my dropbox?
Can you give some more guidance on how to identify them? Or does this bug only put these reappearing files and folders at the top level of my dropbox?
This happened to me too. All of a sudden a really old (at that time shared with another account) folder reappeared. From 2011 circa. Several gigabytes.
I just received an automated email from Dropbox Support outlining that the issue can be resolved using their self-serve help tools on the website. Furthermore, they then closed the help ticket. It's actually kind of insulting that the help request was even flagged for something like this, rather than reviewed by a human. What recourse do we have to obtain assistance on this? Do I have to spam Twitter with help messages?
Spamming in Twitter doesn't seem to be working either...
- Ross_S
Hi all,
Thanks for reporting the issues, appologies for any inconvience, I'm looking into this for you all right now. I'll either write to each of you individually or update the thread here.
Many thanks in advance!
- Rich
Super User II
A788286432 wrote:
What recourse do we have to obtain assistance on this?
Dropbox is already aware of the issue and is looking into it. Reply back to your ticket and include a link to this thread.
- Ross_S
A788286432 wrote:
I just received an automated email from Dropbox Support outlining that the issue can be resolved using their self-serve help tools on the website. Furthermore, they then closed the help ticket. It's actually kind of insulting that the help request was even flagged for something like this, rather than reviewed by a human. What recourse do we have to obtain assistance on this? Do I have to spam Twitter with help messages?
Hi,
Appologies for that, I'm looking into this right now.
Many thanks.
Suddenly this morning very old folders I deleted ages ago are back in my dropbox folder both online as on my computer. Hoew did this happen en can I just delete them? My newest folders seem to be fine.
Best, Femke
Hi! I have the same issue with my account, my Mac is downloading a lot of folders which are deleted 2 or 3 years ago and I don't know why I am downloading it again (and I don't know why Dropbox is still saving this files on his servers)...
I have checked my Activity History and I haven't any kind of "weird" activity. Also I had changed my passwords on my account.
Same issue! 400+ folders and files that were deleted long ago started downloading to all my devices today. What gives? Also isn't this stuff supposed to be purged after 30 days? Is DropBox really keeping our files forever? Scary.
- Indeed; this is what also makes me wonder. Dropbox is supposed to be erasing forever deleted files that's older than 30 days on a few account. Where did all this data come from? This means that potentially they can store anything for ever and this makes you think...
Hi All, On the 18th Jan. approx 11:40 local time (Turkey), I had loads of old long-deleted files from 2011 mysteriously reappear in my Dropbox. Also, some updated files seem to have reverted to older versions of themselves. Does anyone know what's happening? I've since changed my password but this seems more like some strange system error. There are no devices with these older versions that I know of and I use a Mac at home and a PC at work.
- Rich
JasonW wrote:
Does anyone know what's happening?
Yes. The explanation has been posted in the very thread that you replied to. Read the entire thing and you'll have your answer.
I have the very same problem. Almost 10 GB of files I've deleted 6 years ago appeared in my Dropbox today. This is very weird for me since I have never had a single problem before with Dropbox. It is kind of creepy...I can't find the right contact email as well
- Noticed here too... Actually very angry about this. When I deleted files, i liked that I had a window to recover if I made a mistake... But to now know that Dropbox has been storing files I deleted over 5years ago has really shaken my confidence and trust... Some of these files I'm pretty sure i even purged thinking they would be permenantly deleted and never recoverable (long time ago, might even be on another service).... Very angry.
In the mean time I highly recommend everyone change their passwords!! Also, go in and remove all other sessions and connected devices for now. my main issue here is, files from many years ago have re appeared.
Files that dropbox should not keep have been kept without my knowledge.
It feels like NSA/CIA like agreement, what is next, share encryption keys with them? That is a very low blow from Dropbox!
That is what you get from trusting the "cloud", you don't own your data once it is there.
1/19/17 - I just went to save a file to my account and I had old folders suddenly reappear and one major one is now gone. I know this because the folders were those I set up on a project some 8 years ago. My folder structure looks like a mess now and it was tidy just yesterday. More alarming is one important folder is entirely gone! I checked the history and nothing out of the norm shows up but what a mess they have now caused. And I was looking at switching to a business account - ah, not after this.
Old folders reappear here at our office on two out of five computers.
Same issue, I just had folders sync up from years ago. No account activity, checked computer access and no unknown or old computers could have possibly done this. The folders were added yesterday around 8:30 CST.
I suppose at some point the ToS potentially gave Dropbox the OK to keep backups of all users files for ...ever, however such incidents only add to the confusion of the conundrum that Dropbox as well as other online backup [services] have become as of late..
I installed dropbox earlier tonight and I allowed it to do a full sync with my local folder. When I checked it out as it was close to finishing I found 2 extra folders in there.
They are so old I initially didn't even recognize them. Took me a couple of minutes to realize they're a couple of folders with project files from about 6-7 years ago, so extremely old.
I checked the event viewer and it tells me that I added those 2 folders 47 minutes ago ( about the time when I started dropbox after I installed it ).
Has this happened to anyone else ? I assume there's nothing to worry about but the whole thing just seemed somewhat surreal initially to be honest.- RichWas there an existing Dropbox folder already on that computer from a previous installation? If so, when you linked the computer to your account it may have reused the existing folder and anything in it would have been uploaded to your Dropbox account as if it were new.
- no, definitely not. i haven't had those files in any computer of mine since ... 6-7 years ago when the project ended.
