The fact that Dropbox DOESN'T throw the data away makes the point that they are taking your data hostage as leverage to get you to pay, and maybe even pay more

The fact that Dropbox DOESN'T throw the data away makes the point that they are taking your data hostage as leverage to get you to pay, and maybe even pay more over time. As for your own analogy, if you abandon your property during an eviction the landlord's only option would be to dump it as there is no incentive to take the property as a means to recoup losses. Dropbox should just do the same or provide some mechanism for permanent deletion on cancelation or else the data hostage stigma will remain. Edit: I also agree that this is one of the worse forms of dark patterns that subpar marketing teams force their engineers to implement.