After struggling to interface a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 via USB with a PC running Debian and being able to view its content via gMTP (imagine the surprise of discovering that the timing of initiating a connection via the UI after connecting the device to the PC is critical!) to perform a backup, a major oops...
I discovered that what was selected when I chose "Delete" was ".." in a subdirectory of a directory I was trying to back up...no warning...and then no files or folders...
There appears to be a preference for confirming deletion, but as luck would have it...
Beware