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Ask HN: How to remotely disabled Dropbox?
I feel silly for asking this on HN, but I can't find the answer on Dropbox's support or on Google.
Suppose I'm in the situation where I have 2 machines configured with Dropbox and my laptop gets stolen, or I otherwise no longer have access to one of the machines. How does one go about remotely wiping the Dropbox folder on that system considering that it has internet access and my user account is logged in (i.e. default single-user account on a Mac).
- gburt 15y agohttps://www.dropbox.com/account#manage https://www.dropbox.com/account#manage Go there, deauth. a machine. You can't remotely wipe it though, as the files actually exist. You'd need an alternative solution for that. Edit: also, use drive-level encryption and secure your user accounts. =\
- geuis 15y agoThanks. This is very helpful.
- gburt 15y agoPlease be aware this will not remove your files, as they exist on the filesystem (this is intentional, of course, as it allows offline working with Dropbox files). If you wanted to actually remote wipe, you would need other software... sounds scary to be completely honest, I wouldn't trust any packaged software to not create bigger security holes than it is preventing.
- geuis 15y agoYeah, but being able to disable syncing was enough. I left my job on Wednesday and needed to be able to kill the dropbox directory on my desktop without it affecting my home machine. The unlink feature worked perfectly. Thanks!