Sharing is easy to start and easy to forget. A link sent for a review in March is still live in November. A contractor who finished in the summer can still open the project folder. An upload link from last year’s event is quietly accepting files.
None of this is dramatic until it is. The fix is a short, repeatable routine for the end of a piece of work, plus a clear sense of what closing access can and cannot do.
Three kinds of access to close
When a project ends, look at three things separately, because each one is closed in a different place.
Share links you sent out. Links to files or folders that let someone view or download. These live on after the email that carried them is archived.
Upload links you handed out. File requests that let people put files into your storage. An open one is an inbox anyone with the URL can write to.
People you invited. Collaborators added to a folder or workspace with their own account. These outlast links because they are tied to a person, not a URL.
Closing share links
For each link connected to the project, choose one of three actions:
- Revoke it if nobody should open it again. The link stops working immediately and anyone who tries it sees that it is unavailable.
- Shorten the expiry if the recipient still needs a little time. A client collecting finals this week does not need the link next month.
- Leave it only if there is a reason, and write the reason down.
Most share tools list your active links in one place. On dosya.dev you can see each link’s views and downloads with timestamps, which helps decide: a link nobody has opened in months is an easy revoke, while one the client downloaded yesterday may need a friendly heads-up first. Our share links can also carry an expiry from the start, which is the best way to avoid this clean-up altogether. The case for that is in why every share link should have an expiry date.
If you would rather hear about link activity than go looking for it, the Zapier integration has a trigger for when a share link is opened. Route it to email or Slack and a link you forgot about announces itself the next time someone uses it.
Closing upload links
Open upload links are easy to overlook because they do not expose anything. But they still matter: an old link can collect files you are not expecting, in a folder you are no longer watching.
Close each file request when its collection is complete. If you set a deadline when you created it, it has already closed itself. Then check the destination folder one last time, so nothing that arrived late goes unnoticed.
Removing collaborators
People with accounts in your workspace or folder need to be removed by name. Before you do:
- Make sure nothing only they hold is lost. If they created files in the shared folder, those normally stay with the folder, but check that drafts in their own space have been handed over.
- Check what else they can reach. Someone added to a whole workspace can see more than the one project they worked on.
- Remove them, or lower their role if they still need to read old material.
On a team, roles make this cleaner. Our guide to folders, roles and permissions covers how to grant the least access that still lets someone work.
What revoking cannot do
It is worth being clear about the limits, because they shape what you share in the first place.
Revoking does not recall downloads. If a recipient downloaded a file before you revoked the link, they still have their copy. Revocation closes the door; it does not empty the room.
A password does not stop forwarding. Someone who has the link and the password can pass both on. A password protects against the link leaking on its own, not against a recipient deciding to share. Our post on password-protected sharing explains where passwords help.
View-only is not the same as uncopyable. A view-only link prevents straightforward downloads, but anything that appears on a screen can be photographed or captured.
So the real control is at the start: share the smallest set of files that does the job, with an expiry, and keep anything sensitive behind a password and a short window. Revoking is the safety net, not the plan.
Make the end of a project routine
The simplest habit is a wrap-up checklist you run every time:
- Revoke or shorten every share link for the project.
- Close the project’s upload links.
- Remove or downgrade collaborators who are finished.
- Confirm the delivered files are archived where you expect.
- Note anything you deliberately left open, and why.
If you organise each project in its own folder, as in our freelancer storage setup, this takes a few minutes, because every link and every invitation points at one place.
A quarterly sweep
Projects do not always end cleanly. Every few months, run a broader check:
- Links with no expiry date. Each one should have a reason.
- Links to folders that have grown. A folder link shares whatever the folder contains today, not what it contained when you sent it.
- People with access you do not recognise or no longer work with.
- Upload links still open for events or jobs long finished.
For teams, an audit log makes this sweep faster, because it shows who shared what and when. We wrote about what a file audit log should record if you are setting one up, and our audit logs page shows what dosya.dev records.
Closing access is not glamorous work. But it is the difference between files you meant to share and files that are simply still shared.
Frequently asked questions
How do I stop sharing a file I already sent a link for?
Revoke or disable the share link in the storage service you used. Anyone opening the link afterwards sees that it is no longer available. If you only want to shorten its life, change the expiry date instead of revoking it.
Does revoking a link delete files someone already downloaded?
No. Revoking stops future access through that link. Copies that were downloaded before you revoked it stay on the recipient's device, which is why the decision about what to share matters more than the ability to revoke it.
How often should I review my shared links?
At the end of every project, and in a general sweep every few months. Look for links with no expiry, links to folders that have since grown, and collaborators who no longer work with you.
