Low quality duplicate files are being added to my Dropbox - can I stop this?

[Ess31]

Hello,

I am finding that low-quality duplicate files are being randomly added to my Dropbox folders - does anyone know what they are and if there is any way I can stop this from happening? Thanks 🙂

[Walter]

Hi there @Ess31, welcome to our Community and happy Monday!

Can you please let me know  where exactly you are spotting these duplicate files? Can you check your events page to see from where they're being added to your account or the version history of one of those files to see more information?

Keep me posted with your findings! 

[Ess31]

Hi @Walter , thanks for your reply 😊 The files are low quality duplicates (20-30kb often) of higher quality photos I'd taken on my phone. The files would upload to the Camera Uploads folder with the name changed to reflect the time it had uploaded, rather than the time that the original photo was taken.  I have looked at 4 of the low quality photos, and the file names in this case are all including the date 9th December 2022, which is not when I took the photos (my file names are by default the date and time that the photo was taken). When looking at version history nothing significant is shown other than the fact the file is there.  I've tried to look at the events page but it's really difficult to find any one of the photos I'm looking for. However, looking at the dates around the 9th and 10th Dec it seems that a lot of duplicate photos were uploaded at once on these dates.

Hope that's some help..................... Bit of a tech newbie here!!

Ess

[Megan]

Hi @Ess31, based on what you described, it sounds like the size of the original file, and the size of the copy is different, right? 

If the sizes are different, this means that the original photo was modified by a third-party app, most likely by adding metadata to your image. Could you be having any apps accessing the files like that?

This changed the size of the image could be causing the Dropbox app to detect this file as a new image and upload it to Dropbox. 

[Ess31]

Hi @Megan , thanks for your reply 😊 the duplicated files are definitely of a much smaller size to the originals, yes. I don't have much clue what my phone is doing in the background when it comes to 3rd party apps and the like, but what you've described makes a lot of sense. I'll look into the apps on my phone and see what I can come up with. In the meantime if you (or anyone else) has any useful tips for how to locate something like this I'd really appreciate them 😁

Ess

[Megan]

Hi @Ess31, feel free to have a look into this. 

Closing, and eliminating some third-party apps that could be working in the background, and seeing how your Dropbox files will react might be helpful.

If you can't locate any tangible evidence, reply back to me, and we'll take it from there!