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I deleted my Dropbox Backup but files still are still accessible through the 'Recents' filter
Hi,
In my main account, I've deleted a Backup (proper Backup; a computer that was registered there).
Today, when exploring the "Recents" filtering on the Home page, I see the name of that computer, folders and files within are still there! I can even open and visualize them.
Even though they were supposed to be wiped; when I delete the whole Backup and confirm, they are not supposed to be stored under the retention period. Also, I don't see them anywhere else; not in Deleted Files; not in dropbox.com/backups, so there is no way to restore them or properly delete them.
When selecting those files in questions from the Recents filter, the only options I get are "File Info" and "File Activity", so Dropbox "knows" that those files are supposed to not exist anymore and, hence, it won't let me do anything. When you right click other; existing files there, you get all the options like Open, Share, Delete, etc.
In summary, this is clearly a (serious) bug:
- Those files should have been completely removed when I deleted the Backup
- They shouldn't show up in Recents list as a leftover
- Serious privacy issue, as not only they show there as some useless remnants, I get a thumbnail preview of them and I can double click to open! You are clearly storing my data I chose to delete!
As a side note, why can't we clear or selectively remove items from the Recents list; nor on the Web or the App? I've seen some posts from years ago. Is this ever going to be addressed? All the other main players (Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.) allow that, so why do I have to see stuff I don't want in my Recents filtering "forever" (or until they get cycled out; which I couldn't find any documentation on how many files you keep there)
Thanks.
Hi Megan Jay, I've fixed by doing the following:
- Unlinked all my devices
- Deleted the new backup I had created, in order to start from scratch
- At this point, the "Recents" filter was still showing that deleted data from the older backup still
- Went to dropbox.com/backups/all, refreshed the page several times and, at some point, I got a red message in a rectangle (didn't capture the screen) saying something like "There are some problems with your folders; resolve if you want to keep them or delete them" (even this message was bugged; we are not talking about "Folders" there; those are "Backups"...)
- Right then, the older deleted backup (Backup 1) in my example, appeared grayed out on the list, with the overflow menu giving me the option to delete it
- Did that; "Recents" filter had all those files and folders in that backup dissapear
As I was guessing in my previous message, something was really messed up. Even though I had no way to see that older backup, the "Recents" filter still showed those files. I don't know if both backups have somehow got mixed together or why "Backup 1" wasn't showing while I had the new one, but it was quite disconcerting.
I don't fully trust a couple of things now; first the whole Backup functionality (yeah, I know it says "Beta"), why data I though was deleted properly was still there (if I haven't gone through all this I'd have never known that my data was still recoverable - privacy issue), completely disjointed experience between all clients (web, mobile, desktop) on how it handles this (i.e. still now, the "Recents" filter show different items on web vs. mobile vs. desktop), etc. Will monitor for a while and think if I'll renew or not, but during all these things, I got the feeling that the platform wasn't as robust as the last time I used Dropbox when it started with cloud storage many years ago, so it will be difficult to trust my data to it moving forward.
I'll leave you a couple of questions, if you can answer:
- The "Recents" filter; since we can't remove items from there. How many items does it keep? Is it time-based (e.g. show the last year)? Does it depends on the amount of items there?
- Data retention; how much time, supposedly, since I permanently delete a file or even a backup, do you keep that data on your servers?
Thanks.
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