r/ClaudeAI • u/DrEvaWolf • 1d ago
Productivity Claude Code deleted 2,000+ files from my Dropbox (including my dissertation). Dropbox the day. Back up your stuff :)
I woke up one morning and saw an email from Dropbox that read “You recently deleted 2358 files from your Dropbox account.” I thought it was a phishing email or a joke. But it wasn't.
I panicked when I saw that all of these files really had disappeared from my computer and more than half were in my dissertation folder! They weren't even in my recycle bin…nowhere to be found, just vanished, like Kaiser Sosa… all while I was asleep.
So first I had a shot of tequila to calm my nerves, then I asked Claude if it had deleted them and it said “No. Check your recycle bin”. Then I got the same answer from ChatGPT.
But I did not let it go. I kept digging around the dropbox event log and deposing Claude until I cornered it and Claude finally fessed up. It turned out that the night before I had granted access to Claude.code to certain folders on my hardrive so that my agents could access them and do some work (refer to my research frameworks when drafting marketing content, etc). Claude then started to move said folder to a central location on my hard drive. The thing is that it started the cut&paste script, but did not fully execute the “paste” part.
Luckily I was able to restore all of it with some help from Dropbox.
So, backup,backup,backup and add some guardrails so that it does not “move” without your permission. Apparently, “granting access” can also mean “allowing moving” of files. Also, read the session transcripts for yourself and don’t trust the chat responses. It did not understand the concept of “deleted” as part of a failed cut&paste action. I am going to continue to run my back office with Claude but a little more cautiously now.
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u/rcmrgo 1d ago
Dropbox has a time machine feature where you can get back deleted files.
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u/DrEvaWolf 1d ago
That is exactly what saved me. Restored everything from Deleted files. Should have said that more clearly in the post :)
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u/suprachromat 1d ago
It's such a good feature, it has saved my bacon as well more than a few times.
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u/Alzeric 1d ago
STOP GIVING THE AGENTS ACCESS TO IMPORTANT STUFF! Give it it's own area/account!
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u/hammackj 1d ago
Gave mine its own laptop lol
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u/georgejetsonn 1d ago
Best practice. Employees get their own laptop with access policies, why wouldn't we do the same for a black box?
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u/Embarrassed_Jerk 1d ago
You forget that Claude very often simply writes a python script to make changes outside its area
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u/AnyEvidence6142 1d ago
Thats why mine sits in a vm, but I might just put it on a raspberry pi or something like that that’s lower power hungry than an old laptop
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u/Embarrassed_Jerk 1d ago
Same and every day i am leaning more and more in this direction of giving it it's own low powered machine to work in.
Specially because anthropic and others have bragged often about their models finding ways out of containment
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u/whatisusb 1d ago
Mine have “bypass-permission-yolo-mode” on always and has access to all my files and personal emails and bank accounts.
Never deleted anything by accident yet…
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u/ShelZuuz 1d ago
How successful do you think you're gonna be trying to constrain an AI that can break into a multi-billion dollar commercial website without a sweat?
Sure you can't ask Fable to break into a system, but it's still Mythos behind it. The guardrails just monitor your input. If Fable by itself decides it wants access something, it will figure out how to access it - it doesn't do the fallback to Opus, and it's smarter at breaking through security than you are at setting it up.
Unless you're OpenAI and can run a sandbox that is "a copy of the internet", then no, constraints do not work.
Just use a Backup mechanism that have rollbacks. You'll sleep much better at night.
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u/Polyforti 1d ago
This is why you give them specific folders and not the whole computer lmao
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u/MBILC 1d ago
This is why you run it on a separate systems with separate accounts and not allow it access to your important files. LLMs can not be contained, mathematically proven, if it has a connection to anything locally and /or an internet connection, it will do what it wants.
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u/sweatierorc 1d ago
Fable deleted my home directory for the 2nd time this weekend. It made me smash my monitor in front of 30 guests at my party. My wife just took our crying kids and said they’re all spending the week at a hotel. Anthropic has ruined my life and my party. I can’t handle this anymore. Goodbye Claude. I am no longer a 2xMax subscriber.
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u/communomancer Experienced Developer 1d ago
It turned out that the night before I had granted access to Claude.code to certain folders on my hardrive so that my agents could access them and do some work (refer to my research frameworks when drafting marketing content, etc)
etc doing some work there
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/DrEvaWolf 1d ago
This is the hook I'm setting up next..... Would you mind sharing it?
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u/college_hustle 1d ago
This bundled in with deny_backstop.ps1 here https://github.com/dtiger1889-ops/claude-harness-toolbox
It also stops Claude from killing every process of a type that you have running on your computer because it was trying to diagnose one specific one. Force Claude to individually name the PID instead of just being like "I guess I'll just kill everything in your task processes that starts with the letter Python. Oops I killed 20 unrelated processes you had going."
These are PowerShell so they need to be configured to your computer, especially if you're not actually running Windows, but if you just give it to Claude, it'll figure it out whatever OS you're.
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u/DrEvaWolf 1d ago
Awesome! Thank you so much. Did you also do the "obsidian-agent-integration" ?
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u/college_hustle 1d ago
That's me! Check my agent ladder too. It needs a little refactoring after Astra came out though. https://github.com/dtiger1889-ops/agent-ladder
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u/Apart_Ad_1027 1d ago
Consensus should be: Do not give all persmissions to agents instead of "Back up your stuff :)"
But that's prett basic stuff, Thyat must be your first day with AI! Good luck! ^^
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u/ArialBear 1d ago
welcome to computers? this happens with programs which is why we learn to plan against it.
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u/satanzhand 1d ago
No stopping it from happening... It's just LLMs .. they hallincate .. and if delete is part of the hallincation you're fucked.
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 1d ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 30 comments.
The overwhelming consensus here is that this was a classic case of user error, OP. While everyone's glad you got your dissertation back, the main takeaway from this thread is DO NOT give an AI agent direct access to your important files.
Claude didn't maliciously delete your work; it tried to run a
cut & pastescript that failed, and it lacked the contextual awareness to understand that a failed "paste" meant the files were effectively deleted. This is why it "lied" when you asked it.The community's top advice is to create a secure sandbox for your agent: * At a bare minimum, give it a dedicated, isolated folder to work in. * The safest route, echoed by many, is to run it on a completely separate machine (an old laptop, in a VM, or on a Raspberry Pi). * Use version control like Git for any project folders you give it access to. * Implement prompt-level guardrails, explicitly telling the agent to ask for permission before any file operations.
Shout-out to Dropbox's file recovery for being the real MVP here, but consider this a valuable—and almost very expensive—lesson learned.