The dark clouds of customer anger descended upon Adobe last week as problem with its Creative Cloud apps software meant that some Mac users’ files were deleted without warning.

The issue that caused the deletions occurred, due to a bug in the software, when customers installed Adobe’s Creative Cloud version 3.5.0.206 app on their Mac or signed in to the cloud service.

Discovered by Backblaze

The nature of the problem was discovered by Backblaze who make data backup software that is used on Macs, after they started to receive a large number of customer support requests based around the same issue.

What Happened?

The Backblaze software that is utilized by Mac users to back up their files creates a folder called .bzvol in the top level of every drive it backs up (in Mac’s system root directory.). This folder contains the information from the drives that have been backed up by the Mac users. Unfortunately for the Mac users, the fault in the Creative Cloud version 3.5.0.206 app meant that it was deleting the contents of the first hidden folder at the root of the drive in alphabetical order. This folder happened to be the .bzvol folder. The removal of the contents of the folder then prompted an error message from the Backblaze back-up software to tell the Mac user that “your drive is no longer backed up”. This in turn led to those who had received the error message contacting Backblaze’s Customer Support. After investigating the issue Backblaze were able to alert Adobe to the nature of the problem.

The Response

BackBlaze is reported to have made 2 videos demonstrating the flaw to help explain the nature of the problem. After being made aware of the issue, Adobe published a blog post acknowledging that “’the updater may incorrectly remove some files from the system root directory with user writeable permissions”. This was followed two days later by the release of a fix for the issue and instructions for anyone who had experienced problems with the Creative Cloud update to contact Adobe Customer Service. New versions of the app were then made available online for Mac and Windows with the fix in place.

The response from many of the Mac users who had been on the receiving end of the Creative Cloud app was to take to social media to vent their anger with Adobe over the incident and with the nature of their response to it which some perceived to be not being apologetic or transparent enough.