Tracker

Content Enforcement

CSAM reports to NCMEC, accounts disabled, appeals and reinstatements, 2019–2025: Dropbox's own half-yearly enforcement counts, set beside NCMEC's independent per-company totals. Every figure is copied from the source it cites; anything calculated is labelled derived.

What these numbers can and cannot show

They are Dropbox's own enforcement counts plus NCMEC's independent per-company totals. For the five years where both exist (2021–2025), the two reconcile to within about 0.3% (derived: the largest gap is 0.26% of NCMEC's count).
Neither Dropbox's transparency page nor NCMEC's per-company list publishes a false-positive or accuracy rate for Dropbox. This page does not estimate one.
The reinstatement rate cannot by itself show whether detection is accurate or the appeal process is weak: a low rate is consistent with either explanation.
Only about 7–9% of disabled accounts appeal at all (derived: appeals received in a half divided by accounts disabled in the same half, 7.2% to 9.2% across the five halves that publish appeals; the appeals are not necessarily from that half's disabled accounts).
The January 2024 restatement affected the content-items metric only. Dropbox's own note says “Other metrics in this report remain unchanged”, so report counts and accounts disabled were not restated.

When Dropbox becomes aware of apparent child sexual abuse material it says it disables the account and reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The reports, accounts disabled and appeals are set out in the archive's entry on the CSAM enforcement funnel; how the detection works, and why it matters for private files, is covered in the entry on PhotoDNA scanning of private files. For what Dropbox's own pages say about scanning files in general, see does Dropbox scan my files?. If your own account has been disabled, see why a Dropbox account gets disabled.

Dropbox's own half-yearly counts

Newest first, as published on Dropbox's transparency page. Appeals and reinstatement rate are shown as “—” for the five periods in which the page does not publish them. They are not carried across from other periods. For periods up to H1 2023 the page says “actioned” for accounts and defines it as disabling access to the account and/or the piece of content; from H2 2023 it says “disabled access to”.

Period	CyberTip reports to NCMEC	Accounts disabled	Content items actioned	Appeals	Reinstatement rate	Appeals ÷ disabled (derived)
H2 2025 (Jul–Dec)	14,810	14,076	110,621	1,280	1.72%	9.1%
H1 2025 (Jan–Jun)	18,243	17,523	150,645	1,619	2.7%	9.2%
H2 2024 (Jul–Dec)	21,418	20,932	201,558	1,607	2.8%	7.7%
H1 2024 (Jan–Jun)	26,894	26,244	133,542	2,099	3.6%	8.0%
H2 2023 (Jul–Dec)	33,963	31,474	273,565	2,256	2.6%	7.2%
H1 2023 (Jan–Jun)	20,003	18,430	169,726	—	—	—
H2 2022 (Jul–Dec)	19,214	17,829	151,787 *	—	—	—
H1 2022 (Jan–Jun)	26,730	25,336	222,647 *	—	—	—
H2 2021 (Jul–Dec)	24,115	22,799	261,769 *	—	—	—
H1 2021 (Jan–Jun)	24,131	23,000	339,716 *	—	—	—

* Content-items figure corrected on 31 January 2024; the table shows the corrected number (see below). Source: Dropbox Help Center — Transparency: AUP enforcement. The last column is calculated by this site, not published by Dropbox.

CyberTip reports Dropbox says it submitted, by half-year

NCMEC's independent count, 2019–2025

NCMEC publishes a yearly list of CyberTipline reports by electronic service provider. The column “NCMEC count” is that list. The sum of Dropbox's two half-years and the difference are derived by this site; the half-year figures above start in 2021, so 2019 and 2020 have no comparison.

Year	NCMEC count	Dropbox two-half sum (derived)	Difference (derived)	Source
2025	33,043	33,053	−10	NCMEC 2025 reports by ESP (listed as “Dropbox, Inc.”)
2024	48,342	48,312	+30	NCMEC 2024 reports by ESP (listed as “Dropbox, Inc.”)
2023	54,045	53,966	+79	NCMEC 2023 reports by ESP (listed as “Dropbox, Inc.”)
2022	45,992	45,944	+48	NCMEC 2022 reports by ESP (listed as “Dropbox, Inc.”)
2021	48,371	48,246	+125	NCMEC 2021 reports by ESP (listed as “Dropbox”)
2020	20,928	—	—	NCMEC 2020 reports by ESP (listed as “Dropbox”)
2019	5,113	—	—	NCMEC 2019 reports by ESP (listed as “Dropbox, Inc.”)

NCMEC's published count for Dropbox, by year

The 31 January 2024 correction

On 31 January 2024 Dropbox updated the number of individual pieces of content actioned for four half-years, stating the original figure and the correct number. It states that other metrics in those reports remain unchanged. The full account is in the archive entry Dropbox restated four half-years of child-safety enforcement figures at once in January 2024 — the worst period had been overstated 6.4×. The ratio column is derived.

Period	Corrected on	Originally reported	Corrected	Ratio (derived)
H2 2022	31 January 2024	975,499	151,787	6.4×
H1 2022	31 January 2024	382,261	222,647	1.7×
H2 2021	31 January 2024	425,847	261,769	1.6×
H1 2021	31 January 2024	438,175	339,716	1.3×
Total, four halves (derived)		2,221,782	975,919	2.3×

The difference across the four halves is 1,245,863 content items (derived). The correction is to the content-items metric only; CyberTip report counts and accounts disabled are not restated.

This page reports counts that Dropbox and NCMEC have published. It does not assess whether any individual report, account action or appeal outcome was right or wrong, and neither source publishes such a figure. It is not legal advice. Dropbox Watchdog is independent and not affiliated with Dropbox, Inc. or NCMEC.