There's might be some ancillary issue on the backend. Something like that they changed backup formats, but can't reformat the customer's existing backups becau

There's might be some ancillary issue on the backend. Something like that they changed backup formats, but can't reformat the customer's existing backups because of E2EE, so they need the customer to power up their laptop so the client can reformat the backups. That would explain why the client doesn't work, and why they're so keen to have them do a new backup. It wouldn't have been unreasonable to move away from SHA1 in that time period, for example. They may have needed the original files to get a SHA256 hash. I think it must have been blocking some organizational objective. I can't think of any reason why they would bother to send that email, much less to go all the way to the CTO to send that email.