Backblaze No Longer Backs Up Dropbox
It appeared that Backblaze was now just not backing up Dropbox AT ALL, and was discarding (without warning) existing backups of Dropbox folders.
I contacted Backlbaze tech support. Janet their ‘AI Agent’ who is “well-trained to answer your questions” (!!), responded an hour or so later saying that Backblaze now basically do not back up Dropbox as of a recent update to the Mac Backup software.
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Working back through the Backblaze release notes, this change happened in 9.2.2.878. The release notes page does not include release dates for software versions, so there is no way of telling when this change happened.
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If I hadn’t discovered this by accident today, I might not have found out until too late. I suspect this is why I haven’t managed to find more outcry about it on the web today - I suspect this applies to a lot of people, who know this has been working fine and haven’t yet noticed that it’s now broken. Yes, it’s in the release notes, but a change like this should, I feel, be displayed VERY PROMINENTLY as part of an update, or an update causing a change this dramatic should not be forced on users automatically.
I’ve had concerns about Backblaze for a long time, but this is a new low.
Previously:
- Backblaze Business Issues
- Backing Up VM Image Files to Internet Backup Services
- What Backblaze Doesn’t Back Up
2 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
Most companies now treat release notes as adjuncts to the license.
They are no longer designed to inform users of changes, but rather to absolve the publisher of responsibility for changing the initial contract, usually to their advantage — adding more tracking, removing features, etc.
Since OS-level APIs change so quickly and security problems are so numerous, updates are mandatory anyway. Who’s seriously going to hold out on an update because somebody added a new AI assistant or destroyed an interface?
That also explains why release notes are increasingly hard to find. Technically, legally, they are somewhere public: on a random GitHub page, on an article in a monstrous Zendesk “Knowledge Base” whose URL changes all the time, deep in a byzantine forum… Meanwhile, Sparkle or the App Store only ever say “We’ve polished the app, so that it works even better for you.”
Keeping track of release notes now requires a combination of parsing RSS feeds, scraping HTML, and keeping tabs on Bluesky, Mastodon, and 𝕏. That is not wholly a coincidence…
Now, forgive me, my roll of tin foil needs an update…
