Author: Armin Ghassim and Nils Naber, NDR
Anyone who loses data on laptops or hard disks hopes for the help of "data savers". But some providers shamelessly exploit the ignorance of their customers.
Suddenly the screen is black - nothing works, everything is gone: relevant working documents, holiday photos, unique memories. This happened to entrepreneur Philipp Leusbrock. He's working on an important project right now when it happens: The laptop suddenly crashes and doesn't start up anymore.
So he seeks help. He immediately clicks on the first hit: datenklinik.com. He calls a 0800 number for free and at first has a good feeling. He's supposed to send his hard drive to Cologne. A little later, the customer advisor tells him that the data carrier must now be sent to England for intensive processing. The chances of a successful data recovery are very high, he is said by telephone. All he has to do is pay in advance: 625 euros.
Seat abroad - no refund in the event of failure
The written offer then states that the probability of successful data recovery is 70 percent. But Leusbrock was convinced on the phone that in his case, successful data recovery is very likely. He transfers the money and doesn't hear anything for weeks. Then he is told that the data can no longer be recovered. The money is not to be refunded; however, according to AGB.
During the research, customers from all over Germany tell this story again and again: advance payment between 500 and 800 euros, no data returned, and the money is gone. Many companies aggressively advertise on Google that they can save lost data. With addresses in many German cities, they give the impression of being local companies.
Behind "Datenklinik" is a company in Wales: Fields Associates Limited. It says that customers have always been informed in writing of a probability of success of 70 percent - and makes no comment on the fact that other promises are made on the phone.
The company owns many different data recovery portals in Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy. In Germany, for example, there is still the page "Datenphoenix" (data phoenix), for which we have also received many complaints with the same pattern. Fields also have a subsidiary in Thailand. There, the company operates a call center where native-speaking salespeople and account managers look after the desperate customers in Europe.
Not an isolated case in the industry
But other providers also seem dubious. In online forums, customers report that they feel cheated. So we test them ourselves: We send a SSD with the same simple error to different companies: A deleted partition structure. The data could be recovered in a few minutes with free software such as "Testdisk." But the assumption is confirmed: The companies want up to 3189 Euros for fast data recovery with such a simple error.
The companies claim it is a complicated defect; the SSD has to go to the "research department" of the company. The provider "Datenrettung Deutschland," which the Austrian company "Enaris GmbH" is behind, even claims during a first telephone call that the disk is defected.
The problem: an SSD has no magnetic disk at all. Upon request, the company says that the case manager was on an external appointment at the time of the telephone call and had no insight into the case.
Another provider, "Datenrettung Germany" ("GN Data Recovery"), also based in Austria, believes to have found physical damage to the hard disk. The company sends the data carrier back to us, disassembled into its parts.
The data can no longer be recovered. The company asserts that after its diagnosis, there was physical damage and assured that from now on, all data carriers would be checked twice so that errors could be ruled out.
An expert knows the problem
The results do not surprise the expert Jürgen Kupfrian. He has long considered the industry to be "worse than the Wild West." As an appointed expert, he also judges cases in court. With private customers it rarely comes to filing a complaint, however, when enterprises suffer a data loss, it involves numbers such as 50,000 or even hundreds of thousands euro.
He criticizes the fact that many data recovery providers are particularly conspicuous for their strong marketing: They promise customers a free analysis, free collection of the data media - all effective marketing strategies. But an honest review has its price, says Kupfrian. He suspects that companies are mainly interested in customers sending in their data media at all, after which they are paid for them.
Serious companies also cash in
We also sent the market leader, "Kroll Ontrack," an SSD with the same slight error. Although this supplier did not give a wrong diagnosis, the offers of 650 to 1700 Euro are also disproportionate to the severity of the defect, depending on the speed of the data recovery according to our research. "Kroll Ontrack" considers the prices on demand to be reasonable.
Philipp Leusbrock makes regular backups, i.e., copies of his data, since his experience. He has drawn his conclusions: "A student who has lost his master's thesis or, as in my case, the entrepreneur who has lost essential documents is prepared to pay a lot of money just to get back the lost data. That's what these companies are playing with.
