I never thought that it could ever happen to me but it did. Some evil hacker had somehow compromised a public service website of mine, deleted the database making the website unusable and left the following message for me:
"To recover your lost Database and avoid leaking it: Send us X.XX Bitcoin (BTC) to our Bitcoin address XXXXX and contact us by Email with your Server IP or Domain name and a Proof of Payment. If you are unsure if we have your data, contact us and we will send you a proof. Your Database is downloaded and backed up on our servers. Backups that we have right now: DB1, DB2, DB3, DB4 . If we dont receive your payment in the next 10 Days, we will make your database public or use them otherwise."
Fortunately I made daily backups and could recover the deleted database by restoring the most recently saved data. Also battened down the hatches by replacing all related credentials with very secure encrypted passwords.
That's why in this day and age it's vital to your survival to make backups and have a dependable emergency recovery protocol in place in case disaster strikes.
