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Forum Discussion
Message from Dropbox about completing date of birth by 1st September or lose Family Plan Access
Does anyone know how to update account details with your date of birth
the link to the article gives not details how to update your date of birth
Hi andy, Due to recent regulations, you’ll be required to enter your date of birth starting September 1, 2021 to continue using Dropbox Family.
please can anyone help?
thank you
- Hi all, sorry for jumping in.
I wanted to share the good news that the issue has been resolved.
Our team has been working hard on the matter, and everything should be back to normal now.
You can all enter your DOB, by following the link in the email that was sent.
Thank you for your feedback and reports.
Apologies for any frustration caused.
Please help with this issue urgently.
So today is September 1st and like everyone else here I have woken up to yet more messages from Dropbox to update my dob with absolutely no way to do it. This time it was through notifications via the Dropbox apps on both my phone and my laptop - but these still just link to either the generic info page (with no info on how to do it) or to my Dropbox folder online. There is no dob field in Settings so where on earth am I supposed to input this information?
I love using Dropbox, but this is just ridiculous and I am going to spend every waking moment worrying about if or when I am going to lose access to my files.
I'm sending this via a support ticket...
OK, let me use your language against you! This is copy/pasted from your emails and 'help' page and edited to suit...
ACTION REQUIRED: allow me to add my birthday.
Dropbox, you need to allow me to enter my age to continue receiving payment from me for using Dropbox Family. Please do this NOW.
What happens if DropBox won’t let me add my age?
If DropBox does not allow me to enter my date of birth within 24 hours they will be notified via a support ticket that I am closing my account. I will demand a full refund of my previous payment. I will contact my credit card company to request that my previous payment is recovered. I will use social media to complain about DropBox. After 24 hours I will move my files to OneDrive.
Just discovered OneDrive will not upload a file with any of these in the file name
/ \ < > : *”?| full stop _. -.
I have thousands!
completely agree. Dropbox have really dropped the ball in their communication with their clients.
How many thousands of man-hours have been spent trying to find the illusive "date of birth" field by all the Family users?
I checked with my friends and yes this only appears to affect Family users as none of them have had this message. I'm the only sucker paying for Dropbox for me and my 27-year-old partner.
I have emailed support, so here is my email. If I am in error I am glad to hear so. I am a long-time user since the first time it was released. I was asked to confirm my age a few days ago. First time for me and my daughter. Fair enough except for the fact that she has been a user since last year and just joined my family plan a few months ago. Now she has 48 hours to migrate her files out before account deletion.
My email to Support:
I am very disappointed in the recent and frankly recent need to confirm my age as well as my 13-year-old daughter having to confirm her age. I paid for the family plan precisely to support her online learning workflow. We live in Japan. We are US citizens, but due to your policy, she has 48 hours to move the work she has been building there for the last several months into another cloud service we would rather not use.
Some questions before I make a decision about my current subscription:
- Why now? Why ask me (a user for over a decade!) to confirm my age?
- Why does my daughter have to do so three months after she joined my family plan? What sets Dropbox apart from iCloud's requirements (which allows her on my plan)?
- Why is 16 the non-US resident requirement?
- Would you be satisfied with a VPN workaround for traveling families like us?
- Can my daughter's inevitable account deletion be corrected in the next day or so with my consent?
Thank you, I really want to support your service as an educator and start-up entrepreneur working with online learning families, but this will not work with global learners and families operating online. Very sad if we cannot sort this out.
So there it is. I am open to the community giving me advice or helping me understand this. I have evangelized for Dropbox as a happy user for years since the team famously turned down Steve Jobs' offer to buy Dropbox. Maybe it's time to change?
Hi! I agree. This must be a major mistake from Dropbox, and was really upsetting. I don't know of any rules in my country (Norway) that prevents children for using dropbox, since the children's use of dropbox is entirely the parent's responsibility untill they are 18 years old.
The other option i see is that the account is transfered to me, and I am the responsible owner of it.
I sendt a similar request to support, and hope they get back quick.
HI Len L.2, I totally agree,
The concept of Age Gating by Dropbox seems ill conceived at best, a horrible "gotcha" at worst, I mean, what are they thinking? I, like you, have Dropbox Family for our family and my 11 year old's account now has 48 hours to download all... for what reason? I've also written to them but I reckon the solution will be to associate my own DOB to the account... which of course is what will most will be doing (not truthfully reporting their age), so what, in the end, is the point of all this?
I'm very disappointed in the waste of my time, that's for sure yet also am hoping they get back to me ASAP to resolve this. Cheers!- Megan
Dropbox Staff
Hey guys, thank you for posting here!
Your comments on this feature have been quite helpful, and I will do everything I can to ensure that your voice is heard. I will pass on your comments to the relevant departments so that we can further improve our product.
Keep in mind that this change happened in order for Dropbox to comply with legal regulations, which isn't something we can change at the moment because it doesn't fall within our scope of control.
I hope this clarifies.
Thank you, and we will keep that in mind. All the same (if you can bear with our frustration), the team should keep in mind that this is driving customers (like me) into the arms of other family plan cloud services that allow us to carry on without the hiccups.
At this point, the only advantage I would find with Dropbox is being a stand-alone cloud service without trapping users in any particular ecosystem. Well, that's gone when we can't include our kids, and that will hurt your education partners (again like me) who relied on this for teaching-sharing purposes in a growing ed-tech and remote learning world.
Please keep those points in mind.
Best,
Len
Same issue for me re Family Room. Spent ages trying to sort it. Nowhere to enter DoB? Please can you sort this as soon as possible Dropbox?
And yet another email - this time with a link that says 'please sign in now to enter your date of birth' - Ok, but WHERE?????
An update from chat this morning, I've highlighted in bold the bit where it is supposed to work, I'm not seeing the notification anywhere other than in the app at the moment so can't verify this.
Chat transcript:
( 10:20:52 ) Visitor: Have you sorted out me being able to add my Date Of Birth that you are demanding for me to be able to continue using my account?
( 10:23:58 ) Davis: Hi Michael! Thank you for contacting Dropbox Support. My name is Davis, and I'm more than happy to assist you today!
( 10:24:15 ) Davis: You may not be able to add that yet. However, I'll be more than happy to show you right away where (and when) to enter the date of birth information.
( 10:24:29 ) Davis: On September 1st (so some time today) you will get a notification in your account that lets you add it. (So you may not have this yet, until the notification comes through) but you can find your notifications by logging into the website, and in the top right hand side, there is a notifications bell. From there, when you get that notification, it will let you click the notification to enter the date of birth details.
( 10:26:22 ) Visitor: I'm not seeing anything in the website. I have had notifications via the app, but these are not showing in the web notifications
( 10:26:47 ) Davis: If it is not letting you add it from there, I will provide you with another way you can add this is. After this chat ends, I will email you after this chat with the full transcript of our chat. When that email comes, reply to it from your [email] address with the date of birth details, and I will forward them on your behalf.Putting personal info in an email is a really BAD idea.
That DropBox are apparently recommending this as a fix makes you question how they manage the security of our data!
I finally got through to chat support. Highlights include the following:
"Dropbox engineers are aware of the problem and are working on a solution. Sorry for any inconvenience this is causing. We'll update you shortly on this issue. Please rest assured, that your account is safe on Dropbox and no files will be deleted."
"I can confirm that you account will not be deleted and you will not lose data, this is a recent law that has just been passed from the UK requiring date of births to be added to accounts."
I also asked which new law this relates to, and when it was passed:
Me: "But when did Dropbox know it was coming?"
Response: "Last week, when prompts and email were sent out to accounts, that this was coming into force on 1st September. It is a recent change with UK law. And has been passed very quickly."
Me: "Could you give me the name of the law, and ideally a link to it, so I can see when it was enacted?
"Response: "I am afraid, I only have the information that has been given."
I'm now in an email exchange on the matter.
Wish I had come here first, I've also spent upwards of 2 hours trying to find a setting that doesn't exist. Why am I being threatened with account closure unless I enter information that can't be entered? Maybe it is time to give OneDrive another go.
Due to recent regulations, you need to enter your age to continue using Dropbox Family. Please sign in now to enter your date of birth.
Please visit our help center to learn more.
— The Dropbox team
Congrats, there is no info in your help center or anywhere to enter a date of birth. Just goes in an endless loop back to the DropBox account page.
drop box is asking me to fill in my birthday as a legal requirement for using drop box family
where do I fill that in? !!!!!! email says sign in but then i just get my dropbox no idea where to fit that info into drop box as I ve looked all over settings but cant see it
See this other thread, on which hundreds of others are having the same problem.
The live chat you contact is not actually Dropbox but a generic company that deals with hundreds of other companies. All they can do is pass your information on. As there are 100s of thousands of people this is affecting then I cannot see any of us retaining our files. If they are unable to keep my information safe then how safe is their file system. Am going to leave dropbox if they don't sort this out soon. I have had to purchase a exterior hard drive so I can now attempt to download 1000s of files to ensure they are safe.
The link sent to me this morning (which did nothing useful at the time) now allows me to set my date of birth. I suggest that you try again to see what happens.
Yes, this just worked for me as well, so they must have got this fixed.
Has anyone actually received an official update on the issue to inform them that the link seems to work now?
Or are they assuming that everyone will spontaneously decide to try the link again even though they have tried it unsuccessfully many times before.
I spent an hour raking around the account settings and can't find anything so I contacted support via chat.
You have to wait for an email with a link, allegedly.
TL;DR
Chat
Hi there, how do I add a Date Of Birth to Dropbox? I'm tired of the constant nagging from the app, but I can't find anywhere to add it.
Me
Hi Michael! Thank you for contacting Dropbox Support. My name is Dawn, and I'll be more than happy to assist you today with your request.
If I understand correctly, you would like to add the date of birth. Sure! Let me look into this for you right away
Can you please tell me is there a link in the email notification you received?
Dawn
The link just goes to your help center which tells you that you will close the account if there is no DOB but not how to add it#
All the bad things that will happen but not how to stop them happening.
I've spent too long on this already
Me
Okay, no worries! You will receive a further notification from Dropbox with instructions
I can deeply understand your concerns but you will be notifies with a different email, don't worry!
Dawn
Why not just update that page to tell people how to do it?
I pay £168 a year, I don't expect to be told that my account is going to be closed and not be able to resolve it
Me
I know where you come from and I will make sure to pass this on to my team
Dawn
I'm sure my subscription being cancelled won't damage the business but this is one easy way to lose a customer
Me
I'm really sorry for this inconvenience!
Is there anything else I could help you with today, before we close this chat?
Dawn
I'll just start downloading to OneDrive I think. I'm not sure I have confidence that my account won't get closed
Hi there
thank you.
exactly my thoughts and response to the online chat with ‘support’ who obviously have no information and no idea.
ive set up a basic account tonight with different email details but will be downloading to somewhere else as a back up.
it’s a pain in the backside especially as I’m paying for a service which offers support!
- WalterHi there Trimom62 & Mike_Rawlins - thanks for posting on our Community and sharing your thoughts on this with us.
While you won't be able to do this at the time, you'll get prompted on that date to confirm your age.
For more information you can take a look at this Help Center article.
Let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime!The link you give simply states that there will be age requirements, and unless we enter our date of birth terrible things will happen. It does not supply instructions on how to do it, and therefore does not answer the question. Come on Dropbox. The embedded link you have supplied in your email does not provide an opportunity to enter one's date of birth. Sort it out because this is really stressful.
- Total cockup on so many levels. I think the thing I am most cross about is the fact that a service we found reliable, enjoyable to use and subsequently integrated as a stalwart to our very lives has suddenly and with very little warning, held millions of people over a barrel essentially. It just goes to make you question who you trust - clearly not the people in charge of rolling out this project!
Here is the email I sent just now: *pretty fuming*
<< What an absolute disaster this has been. If we treated our customers like this we would expect to see a significant dent in our profits due to dwindling consumer confidence. I hope lessons are learned from this and those responsible for this crass, ham-fisted fiasco taken to task.
I have used Dropbox for years and highly recommended your service to very many people. How can I now recommend a service which rolls out such ill-considered and bumbling nonsense such as the recent Date of Birth request? I understand that it is a requirement to safeguard certain users and that is not called into question but this has wasted hundreds of thousands of hours of people’s time, and not to mention worry about their valuable data being deleted in 48 hours. If you were a bank looking after my money I would close my account and go elsewhere.
Then, not to have the facility in place to actually carry out the requirement takes cocking-up to a different level; followed a day later by a half-arsed email detailing something about ‘confusion’ serves to placate the situation??!! There was no confusion. We all understood that is has been a nonsense from the word go.
Totally unacceptable and I demand a full explanation and apology from the highest level, which should be the least all your customers deserve for the time and worry this has caused everyone.
I would also like to see some concession for the significant number of hours I have wasted on this (so far).
I look forward to your reply. >>
