Online storage platform Dropbox has canceled its unlimited storage plans after it was discovered that some users were using the service for resource-intensive purposes such as mining cryptocurrencies.
In an Aug. 24 blog post, Dropbox said its unlimited premium plans had been changed to metered storage plans, and new users would get 15 terabytes of storage—apparently enough for 100 million documents.
The company added that it knew its “all the space you need” plan would result in uneven usage levels, but in recent months it found some users were consuming “thousands of times more storage space than our real business customers”.
“Increasingly, customers are buying premium subscriptions not to run a business or organization, but for purposes such as cryptocurrency and chia mining.”
Other high-resource uses include reselling its storage space or sharing storage space among multiple people for personal use, Dropbox said.
Dropbox said the unexpected increase in usage came after “other services made similar policy changes.” Microsoft and Google have also dropped unlimited storage plans in recent months.
The company said it understood the move was “disappointing,” but added that enforcing a range of unacceptable use cases was unsustainable and difficult.
related: The Future of BTC Mining and the Bitcoin Halving
In the past, hackers have used cryptojacking malware to insert themselves into victims’ Internet-connected devices or cloud storage accounts.
Malicious programs use resources from devices or cloud services to create virtual machines that mine cryptocurrencies.
In 2021, some attackers targeting users of its storage platform could hack accounts and install mining software within 22 seconds, Google said.
Magazine: Hall of Flame: Crypto Banter’s Ran Neuner Says Ripple Is ‘Despicable,’ Pays Tribute to ZachXBT
