Dropbox is a ubiquitous tool used by many businesses and professionals for collaborative work and document sharing. Many others use Dropbox as a way to store or transfer their personal files. If you no longer use or need it, it’s wise to completely delete Dropbox. It’s better to trust a cloud storage provider that’s reliable and secure, and to remove all traces of your information from a platform you don’t even use anymore.
Is Dropbox Secure?
In 2012, Dropbox faced a data breach. In 2016, they announced that 68 million people were affected. That’s a terrifying amount of individuals who trusted Dropbox, only to be let down when their information became part of an attack. Dropbox contacted every affected user and mandated a password reset in an effort to protect compromised accounts before the passwords were released.
In response, other attackers took advantage of this publicly known mass password reset to create phishing schemes for Dropbox – some of which are still floating around to this day.
Privacy savvy internet users have taken a “once bitten, twice shy” attitude when it comes to Dropbox, opting to completely delete their Dropbox accounts rather than starting over with a new password. It’s hard to blame them. Major providers, especially those that don’t use strict privacy protocols, are always targets for hackers. After all, there were 68 million users to steal from. Ditch Dropbox and move on to something better.
How Do I Uninstall and Delete Dropbox?
You cannot both uninstall and delete your account in one step – Dropbox requires two separate processes.
Uninstalling Dropbox
If you’re running Windows 10, you can uninstall Dropbox by opening the start menu, right-clicking on Dropbox. Click uninstall. Under Programs and Features, you can also click Dropbox and click uninstall. The process is guided and simple from there.
On Mac OS X, click the Dropbox icon on the menu bar. Click your profile and select preferences. Navigate to the account tab. Select “Unlink this Dropbox”. Click the icon again, go back to your profile, and click “Quit Dropbox”. Go to the Applications folder through Finder, and drag the Dropbox file from Applications to Trash.
Deleting Dropbox
You can’t permanently delete your account through the Dropbox application settings. You have to go to the Dropbox website. Some people are going to have an easier time than others – certain accounts are a nightmare to get rid of.
Dropbox Basic, Plus, and Professional users can delete their accounts the same way. Plus and professional users should first cancel their subscriptions before deleting their Dropbox accounts to avoid undue charges. To permanently delete Dropbox Basic, Plus, or Professional, log in on the Dropbox website. Click your avatar, click settings, and navigate to “General”. Under “General”, you will find “Delete Account”.
If you are a Dropbox Business team admin, the process is a little more difficult. Start by cancelling the business subscription. This downgrades all team members to Basic, and they can leave the team and use the instructions for deleting a Basic account. Team admins must first delete all members from the team, contact Dropbox support with a request to downgrade to a free team, leave that free team, and then delete their account as if it were a Basic account. They certainly didn’t make it easy.
Team members also have it rough. If you want to delete your account as a member of a business team, your team admin has to delete you from the team. Then you can delete your account as though it were a Basic account.
Clearly, Dropbox doesn’t want to make it easy for people to quit them.
What Happens to My Data After I Permanently Delete Dropbox?
Dropbox isn’t in a hurry to get rid of your information. They hold onto it for 30 days after you leave, even after a permanent deletion. If you wish to keep your account but permanently delete files, they can hold onto those files for 60 days. They won’t let you recover anything either, so this process isn’t technically an emergency failsafe. They just take their time deleting your data from their storage, a common but worrying practice that many service providers utilize.
Finding a Replacement Service
Of course, we recommend PrivateMail Files cloud storage. Our storage is completely encrypted. We never see anything you send – only you and the recipient do. We use AES-256 encryption to assure that your files never seen by someone who was never meant to have them. We value the privacy of the people who trust us. We wish Dropbox felt the same way. If you want to permanently delete Dropbox, there’s always room for you at PrivateMail.