Online storage platform Dropbox has discontinued its unlimited storage plans due to some users exploiting the service for resource-intensive activities like cryptocurrency mining.
In an August 24 blog post, Dropbox announced that its unlimited premium plans have been replaced with metered storage plans. New users will receive 15 terabytes of storage, which is estimated to be sufficient for about 100 million documents.
The company acknowledged that its previous "all the space you need" plan led to unusual usage patterns, and over the past months, it observed some users consuming "thousands of times more storage space than our real business customers." Dropbox identified crypt currency and chia mining, among other activities, as reasons behind the surge in usage. It also noted that users were sharing storage space among multiple individuals for personal use or reselling the storage.
Dropbox mentioned that this unexpected surge in usage came after other services implemented similar policy changes. This move follows the footsteps of Microsoft and Google, both of which have phased out unlimited storage plans recently. While Dropbox acknowledged that this change e might be disappointing for users, It stated that managing various unacceptable use cases had become unsustainable and challenging.
In previous instances, hackers have exploited cloud storage accounts or Internet-connected devices through cryptojacking malware. Such malicious programs use a device's or cloud service's resources to create virtual machines that mine cryptocurrencies. In 2021, Google reported instances of attackers breaching users' storage accounts and installing mining software in as little as 22 seconds.
