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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 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
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.
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Hello, I have wanted to use Dropbox for about four months. I like the offering, but my only issue is that it doesn't come with E2EE. The acquisition of Boxcryptor last year was meant to have resolved this with this being offered to business users.
Is there any update on this? I will be a paid user when this happens.
- I've not been able to recover my files reticent to use and lay for Dropbox account if I am unsure if the investment will pay off
- Hi Riccardo, I'm not sure what Dropbox's plans are for BoxCryptor, but I would recommend reaching out to their customer support team for more information. In the meantime, it may be a good idea to decrypt your files and make backups just in case. As for encryption with other cloud services, it's hard to say whether or not that will change until we hear more about Dropbox's plans.
apfundDropbox Product Manager
Hi UnicormPink , we will start to onboard first early access customers to our native end-to-end encryption implementation. We plan to release the public version in April next year.
Thank you for your patience!UnicormPink
Dropbox's plans were just explained here again by apfund .i.e. that Boxcryptor will no longer be available as stand-alone solution (for other cloud services) but its technology will be used to implement a native E2E encryption into paid Dropbox packages.
As mentioned here earlier and in at least one more thread, it is not necessary to decrypt your files if you have downloaded your private key from your Boxcryptor account. You can do the decryption offline(!) at any later time when needed.
Tomachi
What do you mean by "...unable to recover...". Could you please provide more details? Do you mean that you could not decrypt the files or what?You mentioned earlier in this thread that encryption is only going to be available to “business” customers. Does that include your “Essentials” plans or is this limited to what is actually named “Business” accounts (that have a 3 user minimum)? I’m willing to stick around for awhile and wait for an Essentials add-on but an upgrade to Business makes no sense for individuals - especially given that there are cloud providers that offer zero knowledge encryption right out of the box (i.e. sync.com)?
- This was never clearly communicated either, but reading between the lines I feel that such implemented encryption will really only be available for such business packages. I wonder how the owners of such business packages will encrypt their data in the meantime...
Dropbox should clarify this - and I think it would be a mistake to keep this from lower-tier paid plans because once a user leaves the service it is unlikely they simply return when this feature is added in the future (unless of course they are really unhappy with the alternative provider). So far, Dropbox got away with not having zke because of Boxcryptor and to some degree they still do because folks can use Boxcryptor as a local installation (sans mobile access, of course) - But that will eventually disappear with a future OS update that renders the Boxcryptor apps obsolete.
- Dropbox should have clarified a lot and made countless mistakes about this whole merger. You can't beat their dilettantism. I will never understand why they did everything in the worst possible way. And people still trust them with unencrypted data...🤦🏻♂️
Boxcryptor / "Secomba GmbH i.L." acquired by Dropbox
Does anyone have any idea when Dropbox is going to provide any updated information regarding they acquired "Key Assets" from Boxcryptor back in December 2022. Since then all of us loyal Boxycryptor users that counted on the ZERO Knowledge base encryption have been kicked to the curb, both by Secomba GmbH i.L., and by Dropbox. It has now been 12-months since Secomba GmbH i.L sold all of us loyal user out for a quick money grab and nothing but crickets from Dropbox on this topic. I would have expected Dropbox to be concerned with upsetting its customer-base so bad that we will never continue using there services even after or if they get there act together and actually provide the embedded version of ZERO Knowledge Encryption they acquired.
