It’s interesting though. For lots of other crimes, people don’t pay ransoms. For example the recent kidnapping of that tv personality’s mother in Arizona. And in those cases, such an arrangement or transaction, when completed fulfills both sides and it’s done. In this case, there is no guarantee that data doesn’t end up sold on the dark web regardless of whether the payment is made. And plenty of other let’s say not as “professional” hacker groups (I put in quotes for lack of a better word, and that’s a term we are using in this thread) sometimes can’t decrypt your shit because they are running shredware rather than ransomware. Or they just fucked up and don’t know what they are doing. So it’s a big chance you are taking.

And yes, some of the “professional” groups have essentially a “customer support” team, which you contact and they help walk you through the process of paying the ransom and whatever else, applying the decryption etc.