That might very well be the case 
I made my account in 2012. If all my files are really gone, that will be devestating. I can’t even begin to imagine rewriting like 1000 pages worth of stuff, especially with my ambition already gone.
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You didn’t make any backups?
No. Dropbox was always reliable and they had a function where you could restore deleted files. I didn’t think something like this would happen.
I wouldn’t trust anyone else to keep my stuff. Reliable or no, shit happens. Personally I backup my stuff on a flash drive which I keep in a little box beside my bed, so nothing short of a house fire can deprive me of my work.
Here’s hoping you can get your stuff back dude.
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Encrypted passwords were leaked, yours would still need to be decrypted to access your account. Even then, would someone really go for all that trouble, delete everything and not change your password/email? If someone was going to hack a Dropbox account they’d be more likely to just steal the account. Even if they had deleted it, it’s unlikely (is it even possible?) that they’d got rid of the restore/history functionality for all your files.
I’m not saying you weren’t hacked, it’s possible, but I’d sooner believe it was a technical difficulty. Condolences either way, I can’t imagine how unpleasant that must be.
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Yeah, it seems unlikely. I’m just confused about all of this and frustrated with their horrible customer service. None of this makes any sense.
Oh, and the “restore” function is only available for a month so it’s possible that my files are really gone forever.
You can get the code back from the ones you have hosted on the CoG store. Do you have any other backups of the WiPs? Even compiled files?
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Actually, I have all the files I’ve edited still–I keep an archive of them, partly because of this sort of thing. So there’s quite a lot of material there, even from the WiPs! I’ll send them along. (:
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Thanks, @fiogan ! That will make things a lot better in the event that I can’t restore my files. A lot of work will still be lost, but it’s far better than having nothing but the published works.
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@Fiogan is a great teacher. Because she taught me, I have a backup file of all my major build releases. Although I should make sure they are not located on Dropbox as well, huh? Well, I’m still learning.
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Regarding the Drop Box hacking, if you type your email address into this website you can see if your data was stolen:
I tested it first with an old email addresses that I knew was spam free and clear as I have never use it anywhere besides contacting family and it came up clear. Trying my pre-2012 Dropbox email address flagged that my Dropbox had been compromised. I’ve since changed my email address.
All of my data is secure on Dropbox - no damage thankfully.
This may sound odd Sam, but try accessing your Dropbox from a different computer, or even a smart phone.
If everything comes up blank, start googling for ‘file restore’ programs that can search your computer for old files. The data should still be on your computer somewhere as although the files are uploaded to Dropbox, the original copies were once saved on your computer.
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A smudge of good news: I still have some Paradox files from when we had the joined demo. Ill email them to you tomorrow (first chance I’ll get!)
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Thanks, Andy! I’ll try that.
How horrific, so dreadfully sorry to hear this happened to you. I had a wonky motherboard garble a HDD once and lost years worth of stuff - it still hurts thinking about it. Back then I did not have backups either. I do hope you can recover your material in the end, @Samuel_H_Young.
But yes, backups and backups of backups, the only way to go, learnt my lesson the hard way, I did.
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That’s pretty horrible @Samuel_H_Young, I’d be devastated as well. Unfortunately there’s not sure fire way of preventing loss of info apart from having back ups of back ups. I’ve learned that the hard way as well after I had a computer die on me about a year back and thought I had a full back up on an external hard drive.
Unfortunately for reasons I can’t fathom, the external hard drive had somehow done a complete reformat when I went to reinstall the info on my new computer and nothing was recoverable off it. I had a partial back up on a 2nd hard drive but still lost stuff, some of which I had to painstakingly put back together since I had to have the info and some stuff I couldn’t replace. I’ve never completely trusted cloud saves as my primary form of back up and your experience has just confirmed that for me.
Andy’s advice on using recovery software is a good one. I’ve managed to recover some lost data in the past off some computers with it. Definitely worth a try.
I’ll be away for a couple of days, but if you want someone with a computer that seems to be accessing dropbox fine to try logging into your account, I’m happy to try that for you if you feel comfortable giving me your login. (I suspect you’ve already tried that though).
I really hope you can get your stuff back from drop box, or at least get decent chunks of it back from the helpful people on the forum who have some of it.
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Thanks, everyone. Jacic, I’ve tried looking on other computers, but there was still nothing. 
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Chess update:
I’ve got a big month coming up, everyone. On October 1st, I’ll be playing in a 5 round, 60 minute tournament in Liberty. On October 16th and 23rd, I’ll be playing 2 rounds each of 90 minute games at the Westport Chess Club, for a big total of 9 classical games in one month. Considering that in my 15 months of tournament chess, I’ve only been able to play 25 classical games (1+ hours each), this is a great opportunity. Also, not only will I have a chance to get some prize money, but more importantly I’ll have the chance to gain a huge amount of rating points.
Plus, there will be the usual 3 round 29 minute tournaments that are held monthly, where I often get first place and win a small cash prize. Finally, I will likely start teaching chess classes with the Midwest Chess Academy in the next few weeks. So all around, chess is going great for me!
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Glad to hear it!
Any luck w Dropbox, or still inaccessible?
Unfortunately not. My computer is too old to update to another system, and I’ve tried using multiple different computers to log into my Dropbox, but none of them show my files anywhere.