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Forum Discussion
Deliberate omission of critical folders for Basic accounts.
I would like to bring to your attention a concerning practice that appears to affect free-tier users.
Dropbox is not any more secure without external backup.
It has become evident that certain shared folders (which are visible and accessible in read-only mode under a single account) are intentionally excluded from backups and event logging for users on the free plan. This omission makes it effectively impossible to track or recover any changes or deletions, as:
- Backup history is almost not available for free accounts.
- Event and activity logs are retained for only 30 days in the free tier.
- No relevant events or actions appear in the logs, even when changes or deletions are suspected.
This issue has been reported and discussed by multiple users across various forums and communities, with many suspecting that folders are being deliberately hidden or removed in free accounts as a way to pressure users into upgrading to a paid subscription.
2 Replies
- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hey, BrainVision, let's jump right into this!
Based on your description, I am not sure I've encountered this before. However, if this isn't the case, feel free to link the thread you came across that describes an issue exactly as yours.
In order to be able to pinpoint the root cause of what you've tried, and see what might be going on, I would really appreciate some further insight. Specifically:
1) What exactly is happening on your end? When you're referring to "backup history" would you be able to let me know if you're talking about our Backup feature?
2) Did you delete any of your files, and have trouble restoring them or something entirely different?
3) Since you also mentioned shared folders, can you check the Shared tab and confirm whether or not the ones you might be looking for appear there? If we're dealing with shared folders, can you let us know if you were invited to them?
The more info we have, the better! - Nancy
Hey BrainVision! Did you have the chance to check Megan’s previous post?
If yes, can you provide us with the info she asked for? We’ll be able to further assist this way.
