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Dropbox Kept Files Around For Years Due To 'Delete' Bug (bleepingcomputer.com)
Dropbox has fixed a bug that caused old, deleted data to reappear on the site. The bug was reported by multiple support threads in the last three weeks and merged into one issue here. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: In some of the complaints users reported seeing folders they deleted in 2009 reappear on their devices overnight. After seeing mysterious folders appear in their profile, some users thought they were hacked. Last week, a Dropbox employee provided an explanation to what happened, blaming the issue on an old bug that affected the metadata of soon-to-be-deleted folders. Instead of deleting the files, as users wanted and regardless of metadata issues, Dropbox choose to keep those files around for years, and eventually restored them due to a blunder. In its File retention Policy, Dropbox says it will keep files around a maximum 60 days after users deleted them.
Dropbox Kept Files Around For Years Due To Delete 'Bug'
FTFY
They didn't notice terabytes of data just piling up over 8 years. Mkay.
Yet another cloud service provide lying about the service it provides. Whatever happened to truth in advertising laws?
We still don't delete in case the feds want to take a peak at anything
As keeping deleted files comes at a significant cost, my guess is that malice here doesn't come from Dropbox itself.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Which OS is it that is so complicated that when you ask it to delete a file, it doesn't? I wasn't aware that one even exists
Funny how for exactly 8 years, this internet company managed to accidentally not delete documents that its users asked to be deleted in confidence, and a week after a new administration takes power, they magically find out that they weren't deleting any documents and now they have to be purged.
It's almost like someone wanted to keep these deleted documents around so they could comb through them to find patterns, or something. It's a good thing that our government isn't spying on us through our social media sharing sites, or something.
This went "unnoticed" for years. Not likely. That would be like you not noticing the Olympic size pool that your neighbor dug in your back yard, after he re-routed his driveway, over your property so that his yard was larger as well as connecting his electrical box to your connection and has been getting free electricity for years.
Remember this - NOTHING gets deleted from the cloud, its just too precious.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
You would think that Dropbox would mark data as deleted and let the storage space be recycled after some delay (to let users "undelete" files due to user error).
Given the scale of Dropbox and the amount of storage they need to buy, this level of "bug" is a deliberate design choice.
Storage is cheap. If you think that Dropbox ever deletes anything you store there, then you are naive.
In general, if anything is free, then you are in some way the product. If data storage is free, then your data is the product. I highly recommend Syncthing. People need to keep ownership of their data.
It wouldn't surprise me if the files or metadata were kept on purpose. They'll be the next Yahoo for it though. God only knows what just info could be found. I'm sure intelligence agencies love it.
..to keep your data on your own machines. In that case the "delete" bug is the more usual variety, where files are accidentally lost or clobbered. These cloud providers are all upside down!
It sounds like the bug was that the files re-appeared. That is now fixed, so most likely we're back to only the NSA and some generous customers having access to those "deleted" files.
No, the specific issue is that if you put your data in "the cloud": It's out of your control. You've put your trust in people who are out of your control and who are almost certainly motivated entirely by money and power, not your well-being or security, except as that drives the first. Data storage providers can -- and will -- do things with your data without telling you that are completely out of your control. Including hand over the data to any entity that can apply enough monetary or threat pressure to motivate them -- like a government or an advertiser.
Unless the data is of absolutely no consequence, putting data in "the cloud" is a very poor decision.
"The cloud" is a touchy-feely name for a monumentally risky choice in data storage. More honestly, it could be called "Untrustworthy storage." Even that's a little too friendly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A bug to the customers, a feature to the government.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
You think the "voice assistants" Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana etc who continually listen to the microphone do not save what they hear? You think the companies are not saving all that audio? Recently there was an article about ultra low bit rate audio codecs, tuned to human speech, that can record 80 years of audio in a 8 GB file.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Dropbox says it will keep files around a maximum 60 days after users deleted them."
Obviously this is wrong, and to suggest that Dropbox had no idea that this was happening seems a bit naive, no?
Deleting files is one of the primary bits of functionality that Dropbox has; to think that somehow they flubbed the code to remove a file is, to me, flatly unbelievable.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Lol! If you're still using Dropbox after Snowden's revelations (I never used them, FWIW), you deserve this. Seriously, network your own box and install Owncloud, or whatever other "cloud" shit interface you need -- if simply rsync'ing files to a headless box is to technical for whoever needs the data.
Disclaimer: I don't know all the use cases of Dropbox and I know some are forced to use it...you guys are cool, I guess.