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Dropbox acquires Boxcryptor. What will happen to all those files that have been encrypted?
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 an...
riccardo1981 wrote:
At this point my question is, what will happen to all those files that have been encrypted with boxcryptor ?
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.
What Dropbox is really saying by reposting a 4-month-old statement is that the leading cloud provider does not currently offer zero-knowledge encryption and that they don't know when it will happen. They acquired Boxcryptor, and for some unknown reason managed to shut down the official Boxcryptor service immediately, instead of leaving everything as it was until they successfully implemented Boxcryptor into Dropbox.
Martin and others, I absolutely share these concerns and wanted to add my voice. As a very loyal Dropbox and Boxcryptor user from nearly the very beginning of both companies, the way they handled this is disappointing. I am a big fan of zero-knowledge cloud data for my personal financial and medical data not only to protect me, but to protect Dropbox as well. I've read most of what both companies have posted these last few months and have really felt the communication was a 2 out of 5 (BTW - if Dropbox is reading this, my wife says "shame on you"). At the least, the companies should have done a better job explaining what was going on. If you're not going to give us a usage path through the transition, tell us. Better yet, you should have planned a path for us to take. As I think of it, both companies should acknowledge the millions of customers that value zero-knowledge encryption and understand it is USERS LIKE US that are the very reason why you acquired the IP from Boxcryptor in the first place. And if it's users like us, then find a way to not abandon us in the transition with little to no method for maintaining our zero-knowledge encrypted files in the cloud. This is such a disappointment. ...as I sit here on a Saturday morning researching zero-encryption alternatives (competitors) to Boxcryptor/Dropbox for me, my family, and my business (I run a SaaS business of my own, so I'm not foreign to these concepts personally or professionally).
In the meantime, I do want to correct some of the previous posts. Paying Boxcryptor customers CAN still access, save, and store files without decrypting buy downloading your personal encryption key from Boxcryptor (even now after your account is locked):
- Log into Boxcryptor and go to advanced: https://www.boxcryptor.com/app/account/index/#advanced
- Click Export Keys and save the encryption file locally on your computer.
- Open Boxcryptor on your local computer, click the three dots, and select Local Account
- You'll be prompted for the Export Key you just downloaded. Load it up, enter your BC password and you will be able to access your Boxcryptor files from within Dropbox on your local computer once the key is loaded. You may have to reset the link between Boxcryptor and Dropbox in the Boxcryptor settings.
Note that I don't think it is possible to access your Boxcryptor files on iOS or Android using this method. If someone knows how to do this, please let me know.
Dropbox, how about a plan or timeline when you might bring back zero-knowledge for your joint customers before you lose a million more of us?
chrissosThanks for your comments. Yes, just in case this is not clear to everyone, even non-paying Boxcryptor customers can still use Boxcryptor with a local account if they downloaded their keys before January 31st. However, it was not an option for me to use an encryption tool that is no longer officially supported for my free plan. Instead, it's cheaper and more convenient to switch to a cloud service that comes with zero-knowledge encryption out of the box, and you don't have to run two applications.
