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Forum Discussion
Lost Files that were permanently deleted after ransomware.
My company has stored files on Dropbox for 8 years and have recovered from 2 Ransomware hits in that time. We have had easily 1 million + files on Dropbox for business. We use roughly 4-5 TB of storage on their servers.
We had another ransomware attack last month and I went on dropbox to recover my files yet this time they had disappeared. I contacted Dropbox support who informed me we didnt have the files stored with them.
I provided proof that the files were on dropbox to which they replied. The hacker had permanently deleted the files and they are now not recoverable.......ever.
They explained that by law they had to provide a service to permanently delete files when the app requests it. When the hacker encrypted our files he permanently deleted our backup then encrypted the files. I have the encrypted versions in our dropbox folder on the app but no way or recovering them. When I connect the hdd to dropbox it will remove these files also, which I am not doing even though they are encrypted.
So as it stands we have lost well over 1 million files, artwork, photoshop psd's and illustrator files along with excel and word documents that all were business critical. We have also lost all our network backups, SQL database backups and server images.
Dropbox have tried rewinding the accounts and tried recovering the accounts and claim that everything is lost..........however they did recover 2 folders from the files that they claim were completely deleted.
How can they recover, roughly 2% of the files, that were lost without being able to recover anything. What needs to happen to get the rest of the files back ?
I am trying here because everytime I contact support I get them saying we will do a rewind, so I tell them that wont work. They then send me to second level support who reply sorry all files have been deleted. So I ask how come some can be recovered and Support dont even reply they just keep closing the ticket forcing me to start again.
I could do with help on the next step. I have sent solicitor letters and emails but nothing is sent back not even support tickets now.
11 Replies
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- Mark
Super User II
Unfortunately if things are permanently deleted it means exactly that - there is no way around it. They'd be in bigger legal trouble if it turned out that the permanent deletion tool actually didnt.
Where are your secondary backups? Restore from those?
Thats just it though the tool didnt woork because files were recovered that were permanently deleted.
I am asking if those files, that were permanently deleted, could be restored why not the rest of the files.
Either way the deletion didnt work because a week later they recovered files.
Surely there should be a warning or a grace period. Are you sure you want to do this email sent to the master account ? With no deletion until a reply is made.
This is a backup company who claim to have 180 day retention and can recover files deleted by a hacker yet they cant. It is all false promises.
- Rich
Richie_Cutler wrote:
This is a backup company who claim to have 180 day retention and can recover files deleted by a hacker yet they cant. It is all false promises.
No, it's not a backup company. It's a file synchronization and collaboration company that happens to have some backup-like functionality. If you're using Dropbox purely for backup purposes, you're using the wrong service.
- Mark
Richie_Cutler wrote:
This is a backup company who claim to have 180 day retention and can recover files deleted by a hacker yet they cant. It is all false promises.
No, it isnt. Its a cloud syncing tool.
Plus. All backup systems and procedures state you should have at least 2 totally separate back up methods - so if you've used only Dropbox there is the issue (ignoring as well a lack of antivirus).
So this, according to Dropbox FAQ''s is incorrect then ?
Dropbox Backup is designed to back up your content in one direction, from your device to the cloud. If you want to edit your content after backing it up to Dropbox Backup, you'll need to do so in the files or folders on the original device.We were backing up images and content to the cloud to be recovered in the case of the files becoming corrupted or encrypted but Dropbox couldnt even do that.
We had 2 sets of backups encrypted which is why we stored our images and files on Dropbox because, and to quote dropbox again, there are 180 days of retention and you can easily recover your files in the event something happens to them.....again lies because this is not the case.We had backups on 2 separate machines and an offsite backup with Dropbox, which was meant to have a 180 day retention recovery rate to restore any files that were corrupted/encrypted.
Also that doesnt excuse the rudeness of the 2nd level support team for just closing tickets with no reply or acknowledgement meaning we had to reopen them. Some they replied to others nothing.
It also doesnt excuse the fact that over 1 million files were deleted with no Are you sure email or confirmation email to confirm the mass deletion of the files.
Surely common sense for a company the size of dropbox would require either the code from a 2 step app just to make sure.- Mark
Richie_Cutler wrote:
So this, according to Dropbox FAQ''s is incorrect then ?
Dropbox Backup is designed to back up your content in one direction, from your device to the cloud. If you want to edit your content after backing it up to Dropbox Backup, you'll need to do so in the files or folders on the original device.No, that information is correct. If you were using backup You were not - you've said yourself you were using the sync part of Dropbox. Dropbox backup is a totally separate product. The files could not have become encrypted if they were on the Backup.
Richie_Cutler wrote:
We had backups on 2 separate machines and an offsite backup with Dropbox, which was meant to have a 180 day retention recovery rate to restore any files that were corrupted/encrypted.
They do have a 180 day retention rate on files to restore. Unless somebody actively permanently deletes them.
If you have backups on 2 separate machines why not restore from there? If they then sync'd the encrypted virus they are not backups. They should never be deemed as backups - backups should be set up in such a way that they cannot be edited once created.
Richie_Cutler wrote:
Also that doesnt excuse the rudeness of the 2nd level support team for just closing tickets with no reply or acknowledgement meaning we had to reopen them. Some they replied to others nothing.
That, sadly, I can only agree with - Dropbox technical support is nothing short of diabolical.
Richie_Cutler wrote:
It also doesnt excuse the fact that over 1 million files were deleted with no Are you sure email or confirmation email to confirm the mass deletion of the files.
Surely common sense for a company the size of dropbox would require either the code from a 2 step app just to make sure.I'm not aware of any cloud organisation requiring such rules to do so. However, it isnt like the permanent delete option/settings were hidden or not visible. Appropriate due diligence when signing up to the service would have spotted this - as well as the fact you need multiple backups across multiple site.
The backups were not as instant as dropbox We still loose files that were 24 hours or less in age.
No matter how you dress it up Dropbox failed to to do what they say. If, like you say, dropbox permanently deleting files is definite then why did they recover files and folders from the permanently deleted stuff. And why didnt they recover more if they could recover those. Thats inconsistent.
On that subject if they were meant to permanently delete files as required by law then surely recovering some of those files breaks that law. So either way dropbox havent done what they said they would.
Basically our solicitor is in contact with Dropbox trying to recover the files or the man hours that were put into files that dropbox have lost.
Dropbox have failed on so many levels and as a result years of work and files have been lost by your company. We had over 5terrabits of data and dropbox can only recover 1.2 terrabits. They use the excuse of the files being permanently deleted when they recovered permanently deleted files just not all of them.
I understand you are only trying to help but what happened contradicts dropbox's faq's and service on so many levels. You are trying to pass the blame onto us for not backing up elsewhere yet we had other backups just not a live backup because we stupidly relied on dropbox for that. We had 4 backups in total and 3 were encrypted the ones that we could recover from the files were older versions because the live versions were on your servers where we thought they would be safe. Lesson learnt anyway the money dropbox has cost the company makes it an expensive one though.- Mark
Note: I dont work for Dropbox.
I'm just a paying user like you.
