A software bug has resulted in the deletion of some of the data belonging to hundreds of private users of the free myCloud version. Swisscom very much regrets this incident. We are aware that this has caused great inconvenience for our customers. We have taken all possible measures to ensure that such an incident does not occur again in the future.
Please find the most important facts and answers to frequently asked questions below:
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.
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(opens in new tab)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
