2022: Dropbox buys Boxcryptor's assets — then winds the service down for its users
November 2022
Dropbox acquired key assets of Boxcryptor, the zero-knowledge encryption tool many used to protect files on Dropbox — and Boxcryptor stopped taking new users and cancelled free accounts, pushing existing users to migrate.
What happened
In November 2022 Dropbox announced it had acquired key assets of Boxcryptor, a German company whose software added client-side, zero-knowledge encryption on top of cloud-storage providers — including, ironically, Dropbox itself. Dropbox said it would embed Boxcryptor's technology natively to bring end-to-end encryption to business users on paid plans.
For Boxcryptor's own customers the practical outcome was a wind-down: the standalone service stopped accepting new users and new license purchases, and free licenses were cancelled as of 31 January 2023, with paid customers supported only through the end of their existing contracts. Many of those customers had specifically chosen Boxcryptor to keep their files unreadable to Dropbox — so an acquisition that removed their independent encryption tool, and folded its technology into Dropbox's own paid tiers, struck a sour note.
Dropbox's move did eventually yield native end-to-end encryption for some Dropbox business folders. But the path there meant absorbing and sunsetting a popular privacy tool that existed in part because users didn't trust providers like Dropbox to hold their keys.
Impact
The episode captures a recurring Dropbox pattern — acquire a useful product, then wind it down for its existing users — applied to, of all things, an encryption tool people used to protect themselves from Dropbox. It forced privacy-conscious users to migrate (many to alternatives like Cryptomator) and underscored the difference between provider-controlled encryption and the zero-knowledge model Boxcryptor had offered.
Sources
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