Currys PC World has been told off for exaggerating the capability of its Knowhow Cloud backup.
A misleading advert on currys.co.uk was banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority after it ruled that “the impression created by the ad was not that the product was singularly for cloud storage, but that it provided some sort of additional security”.
“This”, continued the ASA, “was suggested by the claim ‘Complete Security … All your data is protected and backed up in our military grade encrypted UK based data centres’.”
The advertising regulator said this meant consumers “would understand this claim to mean the product would provide additional security benefits beyond those of a standard cloud storage service”.
But a Knowhow Cloud customer tried to use the service to restore his backups after a ransomware attack. However he found that his data could only be restored if files “were individually recovered through a time-consuming manual process”.
Currys claimed its cloudy backup service was “not intended to cover files that were virus infected, which created a rather complex situation for restoration”. It blamed the customer, suggesting that getting caught in a ransomware attack was his own fault for having “inadequate virus protection” the ASA said.
