You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
No additional space on Business Advanced
Dear community,
I'm here to advice that the support have been denying us additional space for two weeks, first telling us that there was a momentary problem, then that we had made a request before...
Dear Dropbox staff: Read and treat this seriously! Please pass this along to the appropriate department for handling. Thank you.
TLDR: Due to Google Workspace enforcing storage limits; users are migrating hundreds of TB of encrypted data (movies, TV) for use on their Plex servers (they mount and stream data from Dropbox with a tool called Rclone, so they don't have to pay the high cost of storing locally. Link to the tool: https://rclone.org/) . They then sell access to these Plex servers for a monthly paid subscription. This is considered a breach of Dropbox's AUP and these accounts should be banned.
Summary: Google Workspace was not enforcing storage limits and was being abused by people uploading hundreds of TB (even PB) of encrypted data (so they can't even de-duplicate the data) to Google Drive.
Google at the start of March 2023 decided to put a halt to this and is now enforcing storage limits. Users are now looking for a new unlimited cloud storage options. Enter Dropbox. You can see people discussing and pooling together for Dropbox Advanced this on this forum: https://forum.rclone.org/t/dropbox-unlimited-plan-looking-for-other-persons and here: https://forum.rclone.org/t/unlimited-alternatives-to-google-drive-what-are-the-options
This is where the huge influx of data is coming from per your notice:
We are currently seeing unexpected growth across Dropbox Advanced, and as a result are currently only able to grant 1 TB per month per team.
If your team needs more than 1 TB per month, you can purchase a space pack from https://www.dropbox.com/plans
We understand this may be frustrating and are working to resolve this for our customers.
This is a temporary measure we have put in place due to unexpected growth across Dropbox Advanced. We do not yet have an estimate as to when we will be able to grant larger quota increases.
How to solve this: Easily. You are looking for Dropbox Advanced accounts created in March 2023 or after and have 3 users only (usually) and tons of data taken up by encrypted files (basically gibberish). Some accounts may have been created early than March 2023, but still fit the criteria of using TONS of data.
Please investigate this and close the accounts abusing the service Dropbox provides. Thank you.
Sir, you are creating conspiracy theories here.
In a lot of countries you are _obliged_ to store data encrypted. It is not only from interest for video-pirates, but for companies that do architectural and mechanical design, modelling, video-editing and so on. It is a very unwise allegation you are formulating that everyone encrypting their files does bad.
It is for security. Of customer data and sensitive project data.
Also you should ask _why_ people are encrypting their data. Simply because dropbox is scanning the files for copyright-infringement.
If they would not do this, but they are obliged by law to do this unfortunately, then people would not encrypt because it creates overhead to encrypt. And then you could deduplicate on filesystem-side of Dropbox. If you want to be angry at someone, be angry at the lawmakers and rights-holders that are after people that digitize their DVD-collections instead of caring for real criminality in the streets and be angry at Dropbox that is making contracts with people and not fulfilling it, - not be angry at people that use their storage they bought _as advertised_ by Dropbox in an absolutely legitimate manner.
@Shamrock22
You know WHY they are encrypting; to avoid copyright infringement of scanned files. 😆 That provides me all I need to know.
Like I said, any REAL company would not be using Dropbox as a BACKUP. They would USE REAL BACKUP SERVICES. Dropbox is to SHARE files.
And conspiracies? You can see people discussing and using Dropbox for mass uploading files and mounting Dropbox with Rclone at the forum links I provided in my OP. 🤣
I use Dropbox and using encryption to store the security videos from my clients. We encrypt because we don't want those files getting leaked online. I understand Dropbox scanning files for piracy, but I don't want them scanning our files and accessing them so easily. Who know what some hacker group might be able to do if they got access to something like that. Better the encrypt the files and be safe. Doesn't mean you are pirating at all. Plus we are using this because it's a lot cheaper are was supposedly more reliable then the other options out there.
@Dominus
Then you are caught in the cross-fire and should never believe the word "unlimited storage". Google Workspace is now enforcing limits and Dropbox will too. The only re-course is to migrate to locally storing and use Blackbaze as a backup.
Also, why are you storing security footage online? It's best kept OFFLINE is it not? You are violating AUP too as you are backing up too.
The "cloud" is someone else's computer..
I should be more clear, these accounts are storing 50,100,200,300+ terabytes of data. Most users will not be storing this insane amount of data. If you only check accounts doing this on or after March 2023; you can get almost all the big offenders.
