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Linux users can delete folders (including content) that are not shared with them
Dropbox Business Standard with multiple users. Folders that are not shared with a user still show as an empty folder for that user. They can access the folder but not the files - it looks like an emp...
Demitri, Your explanation of the current state is not very consistent! How is a user that don't have access to particular folder able to delete it? That should be possible only when the folder is empty, but in particular case in Dropbox server it's NOT!!! That makes the case a security issue. You definitely have some more work to do for users files protection.
The problem in particular situation, described by asnell, is that despite the folder is not empty on the server it appears empty locally (which makes deletion possible). In meantime, until waiting for real solution, workaround can be putting some file in such folders, like ".dropbox" and ignored in the same way (might be even empty). In such a way direct folder deletion would be impossible - non empty folder. Another way is wipe out all standard flags (not only the write flag, like now). In such a way direct deletion would be impossible too - the system cannot see whether the folder is empty or not, so assumes there is something (as is actually on the server). 😉
Hope this helps some issues fixing to some extent.
Здравко, you have understood the problem correctly. It was a little hard to explain.
The whole problem starts with the folder being shown to a user who does not have access to the contents and ends with the fact that the empty directory can be deleted on a Linux machine. The folder and all contents then get deleted for all the users who did have access.
asnell, when you login to dropbox.com with admin credentials and go to admin console, under settings there, what can be seen as content management? Is it set to "Everyone" or "Only admins"?
Make sure it's set to "Only admins"! Does this change something (to some extent at least)? 🧐
Add: After that, list the content in your Dropbox folder using:
ls -al
To be seen the dot folder' flags.
Hello Здравко . That is better in some ways and I'll actually leave it set to "Only admins". You can see the top level Dropbox directory is now readonly.
However, this means even I can't create a top-level folder, even though I am admin. I can't even create one in the browser interface, the option is disabled!
It's OK, I can set it to "Everyone", create top-level folders and then set it back to "Only admins". It will be rare that I need to do that.
When set as "Only admins" and a user adds write access to the directory they can still delete an unshared folder but it only deletes it locally and it reappears at the next sync. So set at "Only admins" is much safer, if a little inconvenient.
Still not nice that an empty directory is shown but I can live with that.
Thank you for your help.
asnell wrote:...
However, this means even I can't create a top-level folder, even though I am admin. I can't even create one in the browser interface, the option is disabled!
...
Not exactly... When you logged in your application you become there just a team member (part of "Everyone" set), no more admin. That's why you cannot create such folder there - like "Everybody". 😉 As you found out, admin section does this.
Good luck.
