Good gravy... I hadn't even considered that.

I assume end to end encryption would help mitigate this. Breaking E2E encryption would require a client side update that could be hard to implement if the company has already gone belly up.

Probably, business-as-usual systems and policies make it harder for anyone to argue the "debtor in possession" [0] violated their fiduciary duty to do their best to ensure creditors get paid.

In other words, having a "smash glass in case of insolvency" button might do the job of protecting customers, but a judge could decide it looks too much like a shopkeeper screaming "if I can't have it nobody can" before lighting everything valuable on fire.

[0] https://www.uscourts.gov/court-programs/bankruptcy/bankruptc...