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Forum Discussion
How can I remove external collaborators from my Dropbox team?
I just created a new Business account and set up all the initial members. One of the people accidently selected the Merge option when responding to the invite and of course that did not go well. So I deleted him from our site but unfortunately it deleted his entire account (VERY BAD IDEA FOR DROPBOX TO DO THIS BECAUSE SIMPLY BEING A MEMBER OF MY BUSINESS SITE SHOULD NOT GIVE ME THE POWER TO TOTALLY DELETE HIS PERSONAL ACCOUT).
So we got that sorted out fortunately and re-invited him using a different email address to make sure this never happens again.
And now I just noticed that I have 32 External Collaborators on the site that I assume came from him even though he was deleted. How do I remove them? There is no way that DropBox should EVER have added them as collaborators to my site. This is a serious data security risk.
- Rich
Super User II
SIMPLY BEING A MEMBER OF MY BUSINESS SITE SHOULD NOT GIVE ME THE POWER TO TOTALLY DELETE HIS PERSONAL ACCOUT
But he wasn't simply a member. By choosing to merge his account into the team, he transferred ownership of his account to you and was now using one of your paid licenses.
He had a choice when joining; merge the account as he did, or join the team and move all of his current content to a new personal account that only he had access to.
If you haven't done it, you can restore his account within seven days from the deletion. Once you do, you need to convert the account back to an individual account. This is the process to remove someone from the team while letting them keep the account. If you just remove someone from the team, they lose access to the account and the files within it.
And now I just noticed that I have 32 External Collaborators on the site that I assume came from him even though he was deleted. How do I remove them?
Where do you see them listed? Do they actually have access to anything? You can monitor external sharing on your team's Security page.
There is no way that DropBox should EVER have added them as collaborators to my site. This is a serious data security risk.
Remember that you used a function that is intended to fully merge an account and have full control over it. This is very much the intended behavior when adding someone as a member of the team.
If this isn't your intent and they need to be a member, they should join with a new, empty account or, if you just want to share and collaborate on files, they don't need to be a member of the team at all and you can just share a folder with them.
Seems like the MERGE option needs a little more clarity as to the results of the option.
I actually DELETED him and fortunately transferred all his files to myself as owner so I was able to give him access and he set up his original account and transferred them back.
As I said, I gave him access to my new site using a new email address to keep them separate. But now I am stuck with all these collaborators that I need to remove and apparently no way to remove them. I don't care if they have access to existing files or not. And regardless of how they got there, as admin of the site I should be able to remove them from my site.
