Ransomware gangs have started emailing the customers, not just the company

Nearly 29 a day. That is the rate Comparitech logged between July and September: 2,627 claimed ransomware attacks, a record for its tracker and 61 percent more than the same three months of 2025. The average ransom demand was 602,400 dollars, the median 150,000. Qilin and a group calling itself The Gentlemen accounted for the largest share.

The number matters less than the tactic behind it. Gangs are no longer content to encrypt a company's files and wait. After the data is stolen they go after the people in it directly. Rebecca Moody, who runs data research at Comparitech, points to The Gentlemen going after the clients of MIP Holdings in June, and puts the consequence plainly: "paying a ransom is absolutely no guarantee that your stolen data will be deleted."

So the email that arrives is not spam in the usual sense. It knows which company you dealt with, roughly what you bought or what cover you held, and it asks for money to keep that quiet. The answer is still no, and the answer is still to report it rather than reply, but it lands differently when the details are right.

None of that is in your hands. What is in your hands is the other half of ransomware, the half where your own files get locked. A current copy of your documents and photos turns that from a disaster into an afternoon, and Tendvane's one-click backup copies Documents, Pictures and Desktop to a drive of your choosing without you having to think about it.