Dropbox acquires Boxcryptor. What will happen to all those files that have been encrypted?

[riccardo1981]

Hi

As most will know, dropbox has purchased boxcryptor.
At this point my question is, what will happen to all those files that have been encrypted with boxcryptor ? Should they all be decrypted and wait for communication on how the transaction will be handled by Dropbox ?
Boxcryptor was used to encrypt files using other cloud services, will this change ?

Thank you very much
Riccardo

[Rich · Accepted solution]

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@riccardo1981 wrote:

At this point my question is, what will happen to all those files that have been encrypted with boxcryptor ?

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Since this is such a new development, such answers are likely not available yet, beyond what has been stated by the Boxcryptor founders (emphasis mine).

What does this mean for our users and customers?

First of all: All our existing users and customers will remain with the German Secomba GmbH with the same shareholders as during the past 10 years. No contracts, customer data or keys will migrate to Dropbox, all data will remain in our German data centers.

While we’ve sold several key technology assets to Dropbox, we will continue to service our existing users and customers pursuant to the terms of their existing contracts. However, as of today, we will not allow the creation of new accounts or purchases of any new licenses.

If you’re an existing customer, you can keep using Boxcryptor as you do today, and we’ll be in touch with more details as we join forces with Dropbox. If you’re new here and would like to stay up to date on Dropbox’s progress, join the Dropbox mailing list.

You will also find the most important FAQs regarding the next steps below.

[riccardo1981]

Hi,

Thank you for your answer... but...
i am already a boxcryptor customer but until 23.12 license expiration date. at that point what happens ? The software will stop working and I will no longer be able to decrypt my files, which by the way are on multiple cloud providers

[riccardo1981]

I found the answer

https://www.boxcryptor.com/it/blog/post/boxcryptor-and-dropbox-user-info/

yes i need to decrypt all files before my license expire ..what a mess

[romualpiecyk]

I just spent the last week decrypting all of my files. Very disappointing that this is their guidance. Us loyal customers are left in the cold with unencrypted docs in the public cloud, while they ride off into the sunset with their billions. At the end of the day, they never cared about privacy and protection - only developing a platform for an eventual sale.

I'm thinking of moving to Apple iCloud for my file storage, as their new "Advanced Data Protection" seems to offer similar protection whereby Apple doesn't own the encryption keys - we do. See here for more info:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-advances-user-security-with-powerful-new-data-protectio...

[Martin R.19]

forget about Apple iCloud Drive if you own larger data amounts. Pain in the a** I just tried to migrate 50GB data but it killed Finder already during upload. iCloud still has a lot of bugs and is simply not reliable enough. If you are a spoiled Dropbox+Boxcryptor user, nothing will ever compete to and beat this couple. I tried everything and I'm ready for any discussion and will provide cons for all alternatives. And the new end-to-end encryption for iCloud sounds nice but who tells you that it really works reliably and that you can trust? I will always encrypt very sensitive data myself anyway before uploading them to any server/cloud.

Download your key from the Boxcryptor account and then you are safe to decrypt your data with the BC-App on your Mac even if Boxcryptor shuts down their service (this works offline). No need to decrypt all in panic now. In the best possible case Dropbox will implement the Boxcryptor technology to Dropbox so that the encrypted files can be still used later without the need to decrypt them first and re-encrypt them with Dropbox then...waiting desparately for news from Dropbox what their plans are and if Boxcryptor will be still available for other clouds such as Google Drive....

[sebastian_]

Does anybody know if, when, where, how, and likely new pricing to encrypt files locally with DropBox's new BoxCryptor technology? This is only viable if the encryption keys are kept on the local system only and NOT stored anywhere in the DropBox infrastructure.

[gordbox]

I would be very surprised if Dropbox continued access to storage provided by the competing sites that Boxcryptor supported. But I think your question about local encryption is a good one. I have seen nothing from either company to address the question.

[Mark]

@gordbox from what I've read Boxcryptor is going to be an offering to paid business users rather than anybody and everybody. So unless you have a DfB account it wont be possible to use it

[gordbox]

Not the answer I was hoping for, but thanks for answering. Now I know where I stand.