Accidental data deletion in myCloud: The most important facts and FAQs
Please find the most important facts and answers to frequently asked questions below:
Who has been affected by the incident and what is the scale?
A few hundred of the 400,000 myCloud users have been affected. The incident has only affected private users of the free version. Approximately 98% of those affected have lost less than a twentieth of their total data stored.
How do I find out if I have been affected?
All affected customers have already been contacted. If you still wish to check the status of your data, please go to: https://www.mycloud.ch/#status
Is it possible for this bug to occur again?
We offer our assurances that we have taken measures to ensure that such an incident does not occur again in the future. We already work with high security standards for our internal infrastructure and storage optimisation. We have now revised and improved these further. We have also introduced additional security checks.
Why was there no backup of the deleted data?
All data in myCloud is stored multiple times, locally and geographically redundantly in Swisscom data centres. Even if a data centre failed completely, the data would still remain secure at all times.
This free solution for private customers does not feature a traditional back-up. If users actively delete their data, they have to do so in the confidence that the data has been permanently deleted, as is the case with all other comparable services. In this regard, Swisscom deploys a similar architecture to that of third-party services.
For instance: when users delete files from the recycle bin, they need to be confident that the cloud provider is actually deleting them. It was as a result of optimisation tasks in these areas that some data was accidentally moved into the storage system area for permanent deletion: a bug that occurred during the internal development of a software component (script) moved files to this storage system area for permanent deletion.
Is Swisscom Cloud for business customers also affected?
No, these are separate systems. The Enterprise Service Cloud, Dynamic Computing Services and the Application Cloud have a completely different IT architecture and are specially designed to support the high-availability requirements of business customers. These applications have extensive backup solutions.
When did the incident occur and why were people not informed immediately?
This incident dates back to 2018. We immediately took all necessary measures and worked hard to recover the data. We were confident that it would be possible to do so for quite some time. As soon as it became apparent that it would not be possible to restore all the files, we immediately began to inform all affected customers.
Will customers be compensated for the loss of data?
We have contacted anyone affected in person and we are acting with appropriate fairness, depending on the extent of the data loss. We do not envisage any flat-rate compensation.
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