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Dropbox apologises for dropping the ball with Cloud deletion flaw

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

October 13, 2014 | 3 min read

Dropbox has apologised for a glitch which caused the backed-up files of some users to be fully erased, bringing into question the security of service.

As a file backup service Dropbox must be secured against such errors

An issue with the selective sync function in older Dropbox builds has seen files uploaded to the cloud via desktop computers delete entire folders of data, in some cases removing years’ worth of data irrevocably.

The news follows a string of difficulties for cloud services, with Apple receiving criticism for a now-closed third party app exploit which saw the images of over 100 celebrities stolen from the iCloud service.

Dropbox said in a statement: “We received several reports from users who used a Dropbox feature called Selective Sync and couldn’t locate certain files they’d saved in Dropbox.

“When we took a closer look, we discovered that older versions of the Dropbox client had introduced an issue affecting a small number of users whose Dropbox application shut down or restarted while users were applying Selective Sync settings.

“We’re very sorry about this issue and the trouble it might have caused. We’ll keep doing our best to ensure our users' data is always safe and available to them.”

As a result of the error which affected an unspecified amount of people, the firm patched the desktop app, sent out a notice to ensure all users update and retired older versions of the service.

This comes after Edward Snowden criticised Dropbox for not encrypting the data it uploads to the cloud, making the content vulnerable to interception from hackers.

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