Lost access to Dropbox Paper docs/folders

Question

I lost access to a number of dropbox paper documents and folders after converting and then reverting my account from a personal account to a team account and back again (I then rejoined the team using a separate, team-specific account).

I understand that this is the expected behavior for documents that were created from a team account and shared with other members of the team, however I also lost access to documents that:

a) I created from my personal account before I joined the team

b) I hadn't shared with any members of the team

and

c) I never accessed or modified the files, or their containing folders, while I was a member of the team

Upon leaving the team, ownership of all shared paper documents and folders that I owned was transferred to the team admin regardless of the status of my account when the documents or folders were created or whether they were shared with any members of the team or not.

A number of these documents contained sensitive, private information that the team admin should never have had access to. I recognize now that I should not have joined the team using my personal account, but I'm currently trying to resolve this situation and also point out an issue with how dropbox handles ownership in these circumstances.

The team admin has transferred ownership of the affected files to my team account, but I'd like to have ownership transferred to my personal account where these docs belong. I've been unsuccessful in having this issue resolved through email support and I'm looking for feedback. Thanks!

Jay · Answer

Hi stephenstephen, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
&nbsp;
When a team member is deleted, they lose access to all Paper documents, since at the moment of joining the team, the ownership changed to the team admin.
&nbsp;
Just for clarification, are these files visible in your Dropbox folder? Are you able to transfer them to your personal account via a shared folder?
&nbsp;
This will help me to assist further!

stephenstephen · Answer

Thanks for the response Jay!&nbsp;The files are not visible in my Dropbox folder, only when I visit paper.dropbox.com.&nbsp;I believe this means I'm on the pre-2020 release of Dropbox Paper. Is that what you were asking?

Hannah · Answer

Hey stephenstephen, you are indeed correct about the version of Paper that you're using.
&nbsp;
Are you able to share the documents themselves from your current team account to your personal one?

stephenstephen · Answer

Thanks Hannah. Yes I can share them from my team account to my personal account and I have, however I would like to have ownership transferred back to my personal account for the following reasons:- Several of these documents contain confidential information related to different businesses I've worked with and should not exist within the domain of the current team.- Should I ever leave this team, I want to retain ownership of these documents and the team admin should not be granted access to/ownership of these files.&nbsp;A Dropbox support representative previously helped me get ownership of some of these files transferred back, but I have since found additional files that were affected and I am having difficulty getting these transferred.&nbsp;Maybe more significantly, I wanted to point out what I think is a serious privacy issue. In my case it was private business information that was shared, but for the sake of argumentation imagine the document contained private photos shared confidentially with a trusted partner.&nbsp;My motivation for joining the team was an ability to collaborate on specific files and increased storage.&nbsp;It was not clear to me that by joining the team I was also giving consent to the team administrator to access and, in the event that I left or was removed from the team, transferring ownership and revoking my own access to my private files that I had created from my personal dropbox account prior to joining the team.&nbsp;My point is that this behavior has the potential to cause serious harm and at the very least I think stronger guardrails ought to be put in place.

Hannah · Answer

Thanks for getting back to me, Stephen.
&nbsp;
At the moment, you can share Paper docs between team and personal accounts, but you can't transfer doc ownership from a team account to a personal account.
&nbsp;
I completely understand where you're coming from, though, and I can assure you that I have passed your feedback along to our team.
&nbsp;
As a workaround right now, I would suggest creating new docs in your personal account and copying over the contents of the original ones, so that the personal account can be the owner of the new docs.
&nbsp;
I hope this helps.

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