Dropbox Just Deleted 2000 Files Because of My Samsung Phone
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I have been using Dropbox for years now and I have never once had a problem with it…until a week ago when over 2000 files mysteriously vanished from my Dropbox account.
For the record, I love Dropbox – to the point where Dropbox is now integral to running my business – here are two examples:
Dropbox Lightroom Catalog Sync – How To Set It Up
5 Tips to Use Dropbox for Small Business
However, when 2000 files go missing (many critical) I have been forced to decide if I need to cancel my Dropbox account and look for a safer and more reliable cloud file storage solution.
In this article, I will explain how my files were deleted and what you can do to make sure that yours are safe – if you use a Samsung phone and Dropbox – make sure you read this!!!
How Over 2000 Files Were Accidentally Deleted from Dropbox
I use a Samsung phone. I’ve had it for years. However, the internal memory card was getting full, so while looking through the storage on my phone I noticed a whole pile of files in the Documents folder and deleted them.
I don’t ever save any documents to my phone (anything important goes to Dropbox – do you see where this is going?…), so I didn’t think anything of it – I wasn’t sure what was there or why they were there – all I knew was that they were taking up space so I cleared out the folder.
It took over a week to notice that anything was missing from Dropbox.
I would go to open a file and it would be gone. Hmmm weird, oh well, I must have deleted that.
Until I went to open some tax documents that I was SURE I did not delete – they were gone too. So I checked the deleted files and noticed that in addition to the file I was looking for, there were a few other files that had been deleted from the same folder.
OK – I must have made a mistake and deleted the whole folder – no problem, I can restore them.
It took a few days and more missing files before I really realized that most of the Word, Excel and PDF files that are stored in Dropbox had vanished. All of my photos and videos were still there – but I finally realized that there were a ton of document files that had been deleted.
At this point, I knew that I had all these files backed up, and because I had realized that they had been deleted within Dropbox’s 30 day recovery window, everything could be recovered directly from Dropbox (however I have to admit that I was dreading the prospect of manually recovering all these files folder by folder).
And I wanted to know WTF happened!
As it turns out, Samsung has a special “DocumentSync” folder on their devices that is linked with Dropbox. I had no idea that this folder existed or that it was even connected to Dropbox (it’s not the Dropbox app), but when I deleted those files from my phone’s Documents folder to make space – the Samsung app then also deleted the original copies in Dropbox.
Poof – over 2000 documents gone (literally overnight).
What Did Dropbox Customer Support Do About It?
For some reason, Dropbox does not have a way for a user to restore mass files. You can view all the files that you’ve deleted in the past 30 days (the window you have available to recover them), but you have to restore them one at a time.
You can restore groups of files folder by folder – but even that would have taken me all day.
So I put in a support ticket with Dropbox.
At first I was pretty ticked off that there is no live chat or phone support – this was a bit of an emergency that I wanted sorted out right away.
It took a few hours for them to respond, but in the end I’m pretty happy with Dropbox support – they restored all my deleted files, figured out exactly what had happened and gave me precise instructions to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
Here is the email I received from Dropbox support:
Aldo, Nov 3, 1:08 PM PDT:
Hi JP,
My name is Aldo and I am part of our Restorations Team. Thanks for your patience.
It appears that these documents were deleted from the “Samsung Device” app. Samsung created a new deep Dropbox integration for Samsung devices that allows access to all documents in your Dropbox account from a special “DocumentSync” folder on your phone. This DocumentSync feature allows you to add, edit, and delete any files that appear in this folder and these modifications will show up both on your phone and in Dropbox.
I’ve ran a restoartion and it appears to have restored some files you may have missed from this type of deletion. If you find more that are missing, please let me know their names and locations and I’ll be happy to look for them.
You also have the ability to see which user and computer or app added, deleted, or changed a file by looking at the “previous version history” on the web site. For more information, please visit the Help Center article:
https://www.dropbox.com/help/11
DocumentSync is different from the Dropbox application on your phone and you can disable the DocumentSync feature without impacting the Dropbox app. You can turn off the DocumentSync feature on your phone by following these instructions:
1. Tap your device’s “Menu” button
2. Tap “Settings”
3. Tap “Cloud”
4. Tap “Documents” or “DocumentSync”
5. Toggle off
You can also disable this app from the Dropbox website. To do this:
1. Log in to https://www.dropbox.com/account#security
2. Under “Apps linked” find the Samsung Device app.
3. Click the small “x” at the far right of where it says Samsung Device.
Sorry for any confusion this might have caused, but I hope this helps! Feel free to let me know if you have any further questions.
Regards,
Aldo
Bottom line:
1.TURN OFF THE “DOCUMENTSYNC” APP on your Samsung phone, and disable it from Dropbox.
2. Make sure your Dropbox folder is backed up!
Would You Continue To Use Dropbox
If you would have asked me that this afternoon I would have said hell no – Dropbox is toast!
However, they were able to recover everything relatively painlessly – and technically, it wasn’t even really Dropbox’s fault.
It was an app on my Samsung phone that fu*ked things up , but I need to trust Dropbox and I would expect Dropbox to have some sort of failsafe in place to make sure that a user can’t just delete a massive number of files in one pop, and maybe add additional recovery options for mass deletions (everything was backed up on my end – but restoring backups is such messy and time consuming solution).
I have decided that I will give Dropbox a single strike (mainly because I am too busy to bother finding and setting up an alternative) – but I no longer really trust them (which might be a good thing).
What do you think?
Have you had files deleted from Dropbox? Did you switch to another cloud storage solution?
Are you happy with Dropbox? What has your experience been with Dropbox customer service?
Leave a comment below and let us know!
JP Danko
JP Danko is a commercial photographer based in Toronto, Canada. JP can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
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56 responses to “Dropbox Just Deleted 2000 Files Because of My Samsung Phone”
Good warning, but I’ll extend it further, and I’m not blaming you, JP, for the mistake: never delete files from your smartphone unless you are absolutely sure you either don’t need then, or you have a separate backup.
Just a hunch, but I don’t think this deep integration thing is exclusive to Dropbox and Samsung. Mobile OSs have a tendency to group accounts and work in weird ways to save space, sychronize files, eliminate redundancy and whatnot. Since the whole thing is kind of a mess, you never really know the effects of deleting stuff directly in the filesystem.
This is a misstep from Samsung though. If you are not syncing docs directly from Dropbox in it’s own app into the phone, this deep integration from them also shouldn’t download anything, much less replicate deletion to the cloud.
I have to say this though, don’t hate me Samsung fans, TouchWiz kinda sucks. This is something not very well known by regular users but coming more from the developer community – but TouchWiz (Samsung’s Android skin) has been long known to be bloated, inconsistent, and probably badly coded – which is why you’ll occasionally find it doing some stuff it isn’t supposed to do.
Now, this has also been true to several other brands, but recent trends have been pointing to lighter skins without that many modifications and extra functionalities to vanilla Android, which is good for everyone. Hopefully, Samsung starts following the trend for the next phones.
https://goo.gl/HLscWZ&qytam
So basically you don’t understand how an app works on your smartphone but use it to store valuable data. What could possibly go wrong!? The clickbait is also strong…
Thanks for the comment – as this is fairly representative of the rest of the comments, I’ll address them here. You’re all right, I didn’t understand how the app worked on my smartphone – or that it even existed or was linked to Dropbox in the first place. I view my phone and everything on it as temporary because I know that sooner or later I will loose it or break it – apparently Samsung had other ideas. For the record, my Dropbox account is backed up both locally on my NAS and on my cloud backup service SOS. However, retrieving a backup is a royal, time consuming pain in the ass that I would rather avoid. Finally, I do squarely blame Dropbox because a user should not be able to make that level of error without a least a flag “Hey Idiot – Are You Sure You Really Want to Delete 2133 Files”? Cheers!
Hm, it happened when you eleted files on your phone, no? Those files were synched as deleted, so DB had not really anything to do with that, just like when I delete files from my Finder/Explorer. Maybe don’t blindly delete files on your phone? :) even if you don’t use documents on it, did it never struck you to find out WHY they are there?
In any way, I dropped Dropbox (pun intended) a while ago. I don’t feel secure with them anymore, especially with things like my personal data, tax etc. I store everything on my own server through Nextcloud, which is a bit of setup but way more conveniant to me.
Anyone else agree?
that’s what the upvote button is for
he did not store data there, the phone did it automatically and he didn’t know, always this negative condescending know it all which in the process of doing their trolling just proof that they can’t read thoroughly an dont’ get the points.
there clearly should be a warning in an app like that because every new user of such a sammy device should be warned upon deleting files manually that this will delete his files in dropbox and not somewhere hidden in a manual but upon deleting process.
TLDR; user didn’t read the manual, user made a mistake, user blames others.
So, basically, you blame Dropbox for your mistake (aided by some “useful” Samsung app), even though they went, investigated for you, restored your files and told you where you made the mistake and how to prevent it in the future. Wow.
Congratulations, you’ve just been Samsunged.
At least the phone didn’t spontaneously ignite… definitely a kinder way to be Samsunged
As others pointed out in the comments, she didn’t read how the sync works, Dropbox helped her restore her files and explained how to disable the sync function and she’s still blaming Dropbox. Nice, i really like the stupidity of this user.
Besides, there’s a saying in the IT world : “if you don’t have a file in 3 different places and at least one of them offsite then the file doesn’t exist” (as in other words, it’s not really backed up unless you have it in 3 different places)
As others posted, this was simply user error and the user even after being helped recover her files still blames Dropbox even though it wasn’t their fault.
There’s a saying in the IT world : “if you don’t have a file in 3 different places and at least one of them offsite then the file doesn’t exist”, or in other words, it’s not really backed up unless you have it in 3 different places and at least one of them offsite.
That is why i have all my pictures and important documents in 4 places :
– my main PC
– a NAS (Network Attached Storage) – synced every week at least once
– a removable drive – synced every month 2 or 3 times
– cloud storage – synced about weekly
I don’t trust the cloud to archive files, I just use it to transfer them. It’s a global cheap and nasty SanDisk thumbdrive
Google Drive is way better…
https://goo.gl/c7HKSH&togi
You blame dropbox then figure out it was your phone app then at the end blame dropbox again? I only use dropbox for file transfers then I remove the files. It would never occur to me to use it as storage for important documents.
https://goo.gl/UBX6mE&exuw
Interesting that the take-home of this is to consider Dropbox at fault – when their service did exactly what this person’s device (acting as an authorised agent of the person) told it to.
Also interesting that they consider Dropbox a backup service – and even *more* interesting is the implication that they had no other backup. At all.
https://goo.gl/VSjK54&fefix
It’s exceedingly irresponsible for you to headline this as a Dropbox problem on a widely read photography site. Dropbox didn’t delete your files. Your misuse of a Samsung app on your phone caused your files to be deleted – an app you would have had to authorize to access your account. You didn’t have to use that feature on your phone, and you could have easily tested the effects of this app before trusting your entire life to it. But you didn’t.
If you have an ounce of fairness in your soul you would change the title of this article because it completely, unfairly slams Dropbox for something that really wasn’t their fault. Even when it happened and wasn’t their fault they helped you out and you got all of your files back. So why drag Dropbox down in the mud when by your own admission it was an action you initiated with an app you authorized to do so?
This type of irresponsible blame assignment is why we all have to put up with three paragraphs of warning material in every consumer product we buy, stickers on everything to warn us of obvious hazards, and fifteen pages of terms & conditions at every web site.
that´s why you have backups.
and a clever person would also read how an app works before he uses it to store data.
How did the Samsung app gain access to your Dropbox account without your explicit permission? Did it magically guess at your Dropbox credentials?
With that out of the way, I’ve been using Galaxy Note phones for around five years. I like the phones, but do everything I can to avoid any use of their bloatware. That includes Samsung’s offer to integrate my Dropbox account. I use Dropbox and Dropsync, but keep them well away from any services Samsung might induce me to use. None of my files have gone missing by accident.
If Google hadn’t half baked the Pixel XL I’d be using one of those now, but it’s too pricey and too flawed. However, pure Android/Google is how I want my phones going forward. I doubt I’ll ever buy another phone with bloatware. I want OS support including upgrades and security updates in a timely manner. That’s not something Samsung can offer.
so you don’t know and don’t care how your phone works, delete data that you have no idea what it is and where it came from, and then you blame dropbox for your own stupidity? yeah, right….
Problem #1 – You are using a Samsung device. Their products tend to blow up, especially their phones and washers.
Problem #2 – You are using android. ‘Nuff said there.
I have been using Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive for years, and have never had that issue before. Perhaps its because I have 128GB memory now 256GB on my iPhone 7 Plus), or perhaps apps written for iOS are generally more stable and secure. But, bottom line is that it sounds like both user error and lack of quality control in the apps. Do yourself a favor, and upgrade to the far more advanced ios. You won’t regret it!&
Yes. Blame everything else instead of user error. So many ways this article could have gone but instead it went the route of “no fault of mine” which is becoming so typical today. Man up. Realize you made a mistake and instead write an article that gives info to others how not to make that same mistake.
I’m a tech head, photographer and I know as well as any that backups are a necessity. You failed to follow this rule.
https://goo.gl/NbqpQy&pjdiq
Hey JP Danko — change your title to read: “I JUST DELETED 2000 FILES BECAUSE I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND MY SAMSUNG PHONE”
Yea what pretty much everybody else said except the iOS dummy who thinks it is an OS issue. Most Android users don’t need the training wheels though apparently JP does.
First if all, you’re an idiot for blaming Dropbox for your stupid mistake. Also, an idiot for making such a mistake to begin with.
Second of all, BACKUP. BACKUP. BACKUP.
I use Dropbox for my business, and Time Machine backs up every file in my Dropbox. On top of that, everyday at 5am; my drive gets cloned to 2 other drives using Carbon Copy Cloner. If you don’t have redundancies with your backups then you and only you can be blamed for losing important files.
I’ve repeatedly commented whenever the notion that Dropbox is “backup” comes up, to let users know there’s a serious difference between active “sync” – which is what DB does, and which is inherently vulnerable to casual user deletions and changes, interference by other people who get access, or as in this case, a local hardware problem – and true “backup”. A lot of vulnerable users thimpk they have backup when using DB or similar services – sorry about that.
I’ve happily used DB for sync among half a dozen devices for years, but have always belted and suspendered true BACKUP – with independent encryption and not the service’s own encryption for confidential files – on both local hard drives and cloud services. It’s month-end routine for me to update my external hard drives and cloud backup – completely separate from dropbox’s excellent service.
i love all the passive voice that was used in this article. learn how your phone works, people.
Instead of writing : “technically, it wasn’t even really Dropbox’s fault”, you should write “it wasn’t Dropbox’s fault at all”, and also replace : “It was an app on my Samsung phone that fu*ked things up” by “the way I used an app on my Samsung phone fu*ked things up”…
Please grow up and learn from YOUR mistakes instead of blaming others ! :-(
This is part of the reason I will never use any of these “sync” applications and why I do everything manually (or specifically configured scripts) – nothing worse that having a mistake/corruption replicated across all your devices. Backups are about redundancy, across redundant devices, in different redundant locations – each being independent of one another.
Dropbox in it’s native configuration is not a backup! Dropbox is about accessibility to data. Two very different concepts that are unfortunately used interchangeably. How many times have you heard “Oh, I back my stuff up to Dropbox” – and what if a file gets corrupted on your system? That corruption is replicated to your so called backup. Are you able to go back to a previous day? Week? Month? How often do you go into your data to check for corruption? Much less that you think. Typically we don’t notice corruption until we need the data.
We all fail to put a value on the data that we have. We fail to plan for the the “what-if.” And we don’t realize the value of our data until it is gone.
I’ve personally have my data backup between my home and my wife’s studio. I have two NAS devices at each location. I have the studio data backup daily on the studio NAS and home NAS with 8 previous version. I have weekly and monthly backup go to the studio and home NAS. For the daily, weekly and monthly backups, have the VPN connection only live between studio and home for the duration of the backup and under separate daily/weekly/monthly credentials for access to the NAS. The software I use has delta copying, so only changes are transmitted down the pipe. It is a pretty efficient on the bandwidth and time it takes to complete the backup (mind you the first one is a real bitch ).
So if I run into a problem with a file, I can go to my daily local backup – issue there, I can go to the daily remote. Problems there? Go to the weekly or monthly backup.
The point is, the setup doesn’t allow a single point of failure to be replicated across all backups.
I would be hobbled without Dropbox. They are a great product. No need to give them a black eye. It really wasn’t their fault–even though it feels better to say so. Sorry that you had that frustrating experience but it sounds like dropbox was a rockstar and saved the day!
Just a thought: why using a pic of a blond girl for an article about a man mistake ? :-(
Cloud storage is a potentially disastrous idea to store important files on as single layer of back-up.
One should have at least 2 layers of back-up one local and one remote. and use differential back-ups on the local storage to make sure.
I have 2 Qnap appliances with a total of 6 TB of storage in a mirrored configuration. I had many disks fail over the years but never lost a single byte of data. And repairing a failed disk is as easy as swapping the failed one with the new one and let the device restore the mirroring by itself
This article should have been titled “Clueless person erases files and blames the Universe”
https://goo.gl/q4Ayyj&cucug
Files in any Samsung phone may explode over time.
Wait… “I’ve ran a restoartion and it appears to have restored
some files you may have missed from this type of deletion. If you find
more that are missing, please let me know their names and locations and
I’ll be happy to look for them”
Do you see it? Dropbox workers CAN see your files!
F**k That!
You say you had a backup of the deleted files. Seems it would have been faster to restore the files/folders from your backup. They were probably organized into folders within the backup, and you can have restored them all at one time.
And, I don’t believe for an instant that all the critical commenters have read the documentation for all the apps/devices they use.
https://goo.gl/V4pf9W&mopaw
anyone like this as much as me
You deleted the files, not Dropbox, and yet you have the balls to blame THEM for YOUR stupidity? Even after they restore the files for you. Article should be called “I deleted shit by accident, Dropbox saved my ass”
De titel klopt niet. Iets als “Per ongeluk heb ik 2000 bestanden verwijderd en dropbox heeft geholpen om ze terug te krijgen” zou beter zijn. De suggestie wordt gewekt dat Dropbox iets niet goed heeft gedaan terwijl dat nu de enige partij is (naast de schrijver en Samsung) die het goed heeft gedaan.
I prefer Google Drive to Dropbox to be honest.
Obviously no back up plan, or Plan B. you may be the best photographer in the world technically however your business practice is going to close your business without knowing what you are doing totally when it comes to IT issues. It surprises me how many photographers are computer illiterate. Know how to use ALL of your tools. You touch it you should be an expert on how it works. Obviously Mr. Danko has some learning to do.
Me = Just a hack from the states. With back up plans and knowledge how all my tools work.
The only thing I trust is the manual backup I run every now and then. And the backup of the backup.
Use Dropbox to sync your files in real time on different devices, but don’t rely on it for recovering important files ;)
Know your stuff. I think you blame Dropbox for your own mistake by not caring what an other application/service is doing. Namely Samsung sync.
If you delete a kind-of-root folder, just double check what’s inside. That is YOUR responsibility.
welcome to the world of the ‘cloud’ where SLAs and contracts can all be distilled down to:
“we will really really try to do our best, but if something happens our liability is strictly limited to the amount of money you may have paid us.”
“Oh, and while we will try to protect you from yourself, there are no guarantees there either.”
you can of course mass restore files by activating/choosing/checking multiple files and folders in the online version of dropbox. 100% certainly works on macs and windows-pc’s never tried to fiddle that kind on smartie’s but should work as well, just doesn’t make much sense to make that effort once a desk -or -laptopb computer is nearby or available not too far in the future.
Dropbox isn’t designed to be primarily a cloud based “storage”, or backup service, emphasis on “primarily”. It’s great for a lot of things, like data syncing, but not backing up/archiving. I use Backblaze for that.
https://goo.gl/VfQ3dz&jkuli
Oh my goddddd. I did the same thing and have permanently lost thousands of files. When Dropbox roll-backed the files to a date two days before the mass deletion they missed thousands of files and can’t seem to find them.
If using Dropbox, the best solution is to back up to an external hard drive every few weeks or they’re going to lose your files in the case of a mass deletion.
Not loving Dropbox right now!