If you barely understand how computers work, but you know your business's accounts receivables file is gone, and somebody is saying they will retrieve it if you

If you barely understand how computers work, but you know your business's accounts receivables file is gone, and somebody is saying they will retrieve it if you send them some weird internet money, you're probably going to do exactly what they say rather than view this as a great opportunity to scam a scammer. Plus, the criminals they might be trying to scam are almost certainly the victims' only hope of obtaining the symmetric encryption key (there are exceptions; some of these programs have been shown to be written by people not entirely clear on how crypto works -- single global key, obfuscated key on client machine, etc.). By definition, the only people interested in paying are the people who have no backups of data they need, so they have no options, and taking the risk of pissing off the criminal doesn't really make sense. Moreover, for all we know, some victims haven't figured out that they're paying the same people who did the encryption in the first place. From their point of view, this is just like buying antivirus software or taking their computer to Geek Squad.