One month down in 2025: How are your resolutions coming along? Check out how to get back on track here.
Forum Discussion
Rlobo
2 years agoNew member | Level 2
Dropbox deleted 2TB of my data and locked me out of my account
I have been using the 2TB Dropbox for many years to automatically back up all of my active client work and some personal files. I was a big fan, loved the service and would regularly recommend it to others. It always worked and I thought this was the most secure way to never lose data. How painfully wrong I was.
On Thursday (it's Sunday on the day of writing this) I received an invite from a client to join their dropbox team. I clicked the link which gave me two options -
1. Keep your personal dropbox and Teams separate
2. Merge both dropbox accounts
I didn't want to merge my personal account with a client obviously so I clicked on the first option - THIS WIPED OUT EVERYTHING INSTANTLY!!!!
That is no exaggeration. I was instantly signed out and got a notice saying my dropbox account is disabled. I got an email stating that I was refunded the remaining annual fee that I had paid. And another email saying I was removed from the team's account. I was signed out from the dropbox browser and the desktop app and here is the worst part - THE DATA ON MY HARD-DRIVE IS GONE!! I could watch the files disappear from my hard-drive in seconds. It was terrifying.
I went straight to my laptop that also syncs there and the same thing had already happened - I was signed out with an account deactivated warning and almost 2TB of new hard-drive space as all of my files had been removed!
How is this even a function?? I literally clicked on the keep accounts separate option and got no further warning. One click on something that makes no reference to deleting everything or cancelling your account and then - Boom! everything is lost.
I am posting this from a different email address that I used to set up a new account as I am still locked out from my real account. I only did this so that I can hopefully reach someone here.
When I try to sign into my real account I just get a - Your account has been marked as inactive -warning. I opened a ticket and finally just got a response almost a day later advising me to contact the account admin and then they closed the ticket - I am the admin so this doesn't help. I opened another Ticket and got a response that only focused on accessing the teams account suggesting they contact the teams admin. I don’t care about the teams account anymore, I just want my 2tb personal account back which is what I wrote in the response. I haven’t heard anything back in 2 days.
I have active projects running and clients waiting on files. I have one project that I have been working on for over a year which was almost finished. Dropbox has been my only backup of this because I believed what the company claims. I have already lost a client because of this, this is costing me money and business and I have lost over one year of work. This feels worse than theft or a physical hard-drive failing. Who will pay me for my business losses? It's been 4 days of not being able to run my business. The only 2 responses I got from Dropbox read like Ai generated answers and are absolutely useless and not followed up on. Can I ever get those files back? I honestly fear that this could ruin the business I have spent over a decade building. If some human at Dropbox reads this then please please help.
TLDR: Dropbox deleted 2tb of my data. All I did was click on a Dropbox team invite and then on the option to keep both accounts separate. I am now locked out from my account and Dropbox wiped all of the data from my hard-drive. I have not been able to reach anyone that will help in 4 day. It’s costing me money and I’ve already lost a client.
- Nancy
Dropbox Staff
I’m really sorry to read this, Rlobo. Let’s see what we can find together.
As a first, when selecting the option to separate your personal Dropbox account from the Business team, you should see a prompt right after that to create a new Dropbox account (under a different email address) to move your personal files to, before merging to the team.
Is it at all possible that the merge occurred and then, the team admin deleted your Dropbox account from their team (which would result in what you’re seeing now)? I believe this is why you were told to contact them in the meantime as well, to rule this possibility out.
If you’ve checked this with them already, please let me know and I can log a ticket for you to this email address, so that we may investigate further.
Keep me posted for any updates.
- karianthonyceoExplorer | Level 4
I am having a SIMILAR issue and the generic responses are FRUSTRATING! You pay ALL this money for Business Premoium but if you can't log in you are screwed! I feel your frustration! I haven't been able to get into my account for 2 days and they say in 5 more I will lose 10+ years of files, contracts, data and important content that I cannot replace. No phone number to speak to someone is probably going to be the reason I leave and go on social media to inform people why using this service is problematic. HOPEFULLY I get a resolve on this ASAP and it's something as simple as giving me access to my TEAM account again, making sure I haven't been hacked and simply changing the settings so I don't EVER have this happen again.
About Security and Permissions
Start a discussion in the Dropbox Community forum to get help with your account security and permissions. Find support from Community members.
Need more support
If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.
For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.
If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!