How to avoid a serious Dropbox bug that could delete your files

Cloud syncing and storage service Dropbox has become one of the biggest cloud backup solutions in the world by providing users with a remarkably simple solution that just works. All users have to do is save any files in a folder within the Dropbox directory on their computers, and those files are automatically backed up and synced across all of their other computers. What’s more, anytime any of those files are updated in any way, Dropbox automatically saves the changes and syncs them across all connected PCs.

It’s a wonderfully intelligent and useful service, but what happens when things go wrong and a serious bug starts deleting people’s files?

As noted on Hacker News, Dropbox has confirmed a bug that is doing exactly that — deleting users’ files randomly and offering them no way to restore documents, photos and other files that might be affected. The bug has impacted some users who have Dropbox’s “Selective Sync” feature enabled, and people have found that years worth of content has gone missing.

The bad news is that right now, there’s simply no way to recover files that have been deleted, as Engadget noted. Unfortunately, all affected users can do is sit back and wait as Dropbox attempts to recover their lost files (the company says it is working hard to restore users’ files).

The good news, however, is that avoiding the bug is now very easy. All you have to do is open the Dropbox client on your computer and update to the newest version of the software. Dropbox has confirmed that the bug is fixed in its latest releases for Windows and Mac, so simply updating will ensure that users avoid any further damage.

Here’s a copy of the email that Dropbox is sending to affected users, as posted by Michael Armogan on Google+: