thomas

1/ This is going to be one of those “I can’t believe it finally happened to me” threads.

It’s long, but there shall be dank memes, so please bear with me. 🧵

PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Aviator, diver, ETH maxi, nexialist | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

2/ Last night, I got a popup on my laptop asking me to sign back into Dropbox.

Unusual, but other services have logged me out randomly before, so I did not think much of it.

3/ I entered my password and received an error message: “invalid user name or password”.

Strange! I haven’t changed my password lately and I’m just sober enough to know it is correct.

4/ Then I noticed the same issue on my phone — the Dropbox app won’t let me in. Clearly an account problem.

So I submitted a support ticket  on the Dropbox website.

5/ I would gladly provide a picture of that, but once you’re locked out of Dropbox, you’re also unable to access your support tickets.

Visions of a certain Czech novelist come to mind.

6/ The reply came through by email this morning:

“Hello, the account has been disabled for a violation of Dropbox’s Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy. Regards”

I blanked out the support agent’s name, but let’s call her Shirley.

7/ In my previous interactions with Dropbox Support, they would at least sign with “Best regards”. Shirley’s sudden curtness in signing “Regards” subtly conveyed that we were no longer BFFs.

8/ Hurt feelings aside, what annoyed me the most is that I had also convinced my relatives to gradually move their stuff to my Dropbox Family space over the years.

So they were also cut off, and predictably upset that Shirley didn’t even send them her regards.

9/ This is how the cat looks at me now. I didn’t take a picture of the wife, but I expect to sleep on your couch for a while — that’s cool, right?

10/ Speedrunning through the five stages of grief, my first stop was denial. Surely Dropbox was not serious about terminating my paid sub?

(See the whole Shirley setup now? I actually put effort in those threads)

11/ To find out, I finally got around to reading the Terms of Service™, which you have *obviously* read before signing up to your favorite cloud provider.

12/ TL;DR: Dropbox can terminate for any one of three reasons.

13/ I’m a pacifist at heart, and I paid for my sub, so that rules out reasons 2 and 3. Ergo, I’m in breach of the Terms™. But surely, Dropbox would give me an advance notice so I can download my stuff?

14/ Praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster! So I’ll just check my email, find the termination notice, and follow the steps there.

Except that… I didn’t receive any email. Cue the sad trombone.

15/ You see, the Terms™ also stipulate that Dropbox might feel cute and *not* notify you nor let you download your stuff after all. At this point I’ve moved on to the anger stage.

16/ What you should know is that I’m a boring middle-aged dude with a steady white-collar job and no known addiction outside of Coke Zero.

17/ which means I only store mundane stuff on Dropbox: family photos, ID copies, financial statements, medical records, etc. I’m pretty certain the FBI is not on my case, which leaves only option 1: violation of the Acceptable Use Policy™.

18/ Now we’re getting deep into the rabbit hole. The Policy™ has a bazillion violation conditions, yet I recognize myself in none of them. And, Shirley won’t tell me which one they accuse me of. Maybe I have an evil doppelgänger.

19/ Anyway, speculation is pointless, so let me just download my stuff and move on with my now Dropbox-free life. Right?

20/ Great, so I can’t even salvage 15 years worth of personal memories from the cloud storage provider whose very paid purpose is to keep them safe.

Ushering me right into the depression stage of the Kübler-Ross model.

21/ At the very least, I should be able to bargain with Dropbox to refund me the remainder of my annual pre-paid family plan, right?

22/ A quick Google search turns up many such cases of Dropbox abruptly terminating user accounts with no explanation, recourse, data export, or refund.

I can feel the acceptance seeping into my defeated body.

23/ The bottom line is: what happened to me can happen to you, and not just with Dropbox. You say “not your keys, not your crypto”? I say: “not your computer, not your data”.

24/ I am not advising you to stop using Dropbox. You do you, boo. But, at the very least, follow the 3–2–1 backup rule. If you have enough space, make all your files available offline on your Dropbox-linked computer, and make a regular backup of that to a separate drive or cloud provider.

25/ As a Xennial who grew up with offline computers and a healthy distrust in the cloud, I’ve been backing up my Dropbox everyday to a NAS.

I’m still working through the recovery, but if I manage to get back all my stuff, it won’t be thanks to Shirley. 🎬