We have received a lot of feedback regarding our points and rewards system. We have now developed a new system, which will make valuable rewards possible for all our loyal customers and partners. We would like to thank all the customers who have contributed to this new system by providing their feedback and ideas! Premium-RapidPoints will now be counted separately from the classical (Free-)RapidPoints. Premium-RapidPoints can be exchanged for Free-RapidPoints, but as an additional possibility, you will also be able to use them in place of the former "ReferrerPoints" in exchange for valuable rewards. Your Premium-RapidPoints are shown in the Premium or Collector's Zone, as well as the conversion feature. API programmers can find the according functions in the API documentation. As a compensation for the waiting time until our new system has been finished, we are offering a great summer special: currently, you can create a 30-days Premium Account for only 1998 Free-RapidPoints! Update, August 24: In order to simplify the system, the currency "ReferrerPoints" has been removed. The news message has been updated accordingly. When you gain us a new customer, you will receive Premium-RapidPoints instead, which you can use just like the ReferrerPoints. Of course all ReferrerPoints that have been collected until now have been conversed into the according number of Premium-RapidPoints.

Bobby Chang, our COO, travelled to New Delhi in July. The mission: Congratulate 19 year old Srishti A. and hand over a check worth 50.000 Euro. Srishti had come with her parents and commented with a radiant smile: "This is one of the happiest moments in my life! The cash prize will help me pursue my dream for higher studies at a good college." Being an undergraduate student of computer applications, she had first heard about RapidShare through college friends. After trying it herself she found it "really handy" and very secure and hence started using it frequently to download and exchange files, documents, pictures etc. Even at the event she still found it difficult to believe that she is the lucky winner. But see yourself ? here is the video.

All our performance tests have been completed, therefore the Super Happy Hours for Premium users have ended. The wires were glowing constantly during the past days, and we have been able to implement some additional technical improvements. Of course the usual Premium Happy Hours from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m. CET remain active, so during that time only 10% of your traffic usage is counted.

To test parts of our new infrastructure, we have just disabled any traffic limits for premium users. This means unlimited downloading for all our premium customers. Have fun! Please notice that we may revoke this feature at any time without prior notice.

We have improved the way remote uploads are handled. There was a limit of 30 remote uploads you can enqueue, and they used to be started all at the same time. This has been changed so that you can now enqueue up to 300 links, but only 5 copy jobs will be started at the same time. This will avoid remote server problems, which are unable to handle so many download tasks at the same time. As soon as these jobs finish, the next copy jobs will be started automatically.

As you know we are constantly trying to improve your experience with RapidShare. This includes simplifying our system, fighting fraud attempts and, of course, improving your benefits. In order to accommodate those needs, we have modified the way we count the RapidPoints generated by Premium Users. There is no 255 points limit per day anymore. This means, you can get an unlimited number of PU RapidPoints per day. The PU RapidPoints will not be stored separately, but added directly to your RapidPoints total, so they can also be used immediately. Every Premium User can generate 1 RapidPoint per 5 minutes for other users by downloading their files. Those changes take effect immediately. If you would like to see how many RapidPoints and PU RapidPoints you have received each day, please let us know. We consider adding this information as an evaluation feature in the future.

RapidShare now offers you an affiliate program through which you can earn hard cash. Our affiliate program is not to be confused with other affiliate programs though. We will continue not to bother our customers with annoying pop up ads. It's also possible without that: a new one year account that is acquired today can earn you 20 Euro! Any owner of a Premium or Collector's account can participate. There is no need for a complicated setup process either. Just have a look at your Premium or Collector's Zone - you might already have earned some Euros. As soon as someone buys a Premium Account from the download page of a file you have uploaded, ReferrerPoints will be credited to your account. You can cash out the ReferrerPoints at an exchange rate which also is shown in the Premium and Collector's Zone. More information can be found in our FAQ.

Srishti A. from India is the lucky winner of our RapidShare Lottery. COO Bobby Chang will personally congratulate the 19-year-old and present her with the 50.000 EUR at the beginning of July. Pictures and more information will be published here.

Due to the big interest in our lottery, we have decided to additionally raffle 1000 x 10.000 RapidPoints among all participants. The winners will be notified by e-mail and the RapidPoints will automatically be given to the accounts that contained the winning tickets.

RapidShare customers from more than 60 countries have participated in the lottery. Until May 31 everybody had the possibility to exchange 50 RapidPoints for a lottery ticket to join in our big lottery. We want to thank all our users from all over the world for the enormous participation.

RapidShare is fast, easy and secure. You can experience "Fast" and "Easy" on our website every day. But how about "Secure"? What is happening to your data behind the scenes? Especially in today's world, which suffers from a "surveillance hype" in many places, that question becomes more and more important. Our support team also receives a lot of questions about data privacy, and quite a number of rumours are circulating on the internet. Therefore, we have set ourselves the goal of handling this topic as transparently as possible. After all, it is your right to know straight from the source what information we store and how we treat it. From now on, the navigation bar on top of each RapidShare page will show the link "Privacy Policy", under which the questions our customers ask about data privacy are answered in an easily understandable, yet legally binding way.

Our file migrator really is a useful tool. You can move one, several or even all your files from one account to another, even amongst different account types, within seconds. Unfortunately, that tool has been abused often in the past. That is why we now have to charge a fee for using it. From now on, using the file migrator will cost 500 RapidPoints, 250 of which will be subtracted from the source account and 250 from the destination account. Thus, we hope to contain improper usage of the file migrator. It is possible that we will have to restrict it further so it can be used only once per day. We would like to point out that the original purpose of that tool was to enable you of moving your files from a collector's account to a Premium account if you decide to become a Premium customer (or the other way around) - not for moving lots of files several times a day between several accounts.