In a major shift in strategy, cloud storage provider Dropbox has dropped its offer of unlimited storage for its users after blaming perpetual demands from cryptocurrency miners and resellers for the move.
The company has previously offered its users unlimited storage for all their documents, photos, videos, and other important files. However, with new crypto mining activity and resellers attempting to take advantage of its unlimited storage offer, the company has had to restructure its approach.
In its official statement, Dropbox said, “We want to make sure everyone has an amazing experience with Dropbox, as any storage issues can quickly become too expensive to maintain. To help stay ahead of this, we’ve decided to end our unlimited storage offer and replace it with more cost-effective plans and advanced features.”
The company cited the rising demands from crypto miners as one of the main reasons behind the move. Crypto miners use massive energy resources to power and maintain their operations and often attempt to use a platform’s servers to store their files. This, the company explained, leads to sudden spikes in server utilization that can then increase the costs of storage maintenance.
In addition to the rising demand from crypto miners, Dropbox also found that many resellers were trying to take advantage of its unlimited storage offer. These resellers were storing massive amounts of data for purposes that weren’t within the purview of a standard user. Dropbox estimates that this type of abusive behavior accounted for nearly 10 percent of its overall data storage usage.
As part of the new plan, Dropbox has created a range of storage plans to meet different needs. These plans range from the Basic 2GB, which is free, to Professional 2TB, which costs $19.99 per month. Dropbox also said it will continue to offer a range of advanced features to help its users store, share, and back up their files properly.
With this major policy shift, Dropbox is effectively forcing users to pay for the amount of storage they need. By limiting the amount of data users can store and by creating plans specifically designed to suit different usage requirements, the company hopes to better manage the utilization of its servers and keep costs down.
At the same time, Dropbox has taken steps to prevent abusive activity from taking place by introducing a range of security measures. These measures include redirecting suspect requests to a CAPTCHA page, limiting the amount of API calls from any given IP address, and banning port scanning.
By dropping its unlimited storage offer, Dropbox has effectively shut down all avenues for prolonged abuse from miners and resellers. The company hopes that the new measures and plans will help keep its servers running efficiently and provide better user experiences for the vast majority of its customers.
