Free? It would have required more effort, but they could have encrypted all the data, and then sent the key to a well-known white-hat security researcher, or someone who could be trusted to administrate important cases (they'd of course be free to ignore it). The encryption could be done on the compromised server with a forEach, so it'd be a single request.

I think some people in this thread want to be a bit too "absolutist" about it. Everyone's servers were exposed to heartbleed, spectre, meltdown, etc so the absolutists would apparently want the whole internet deleted.

Edit: It would be helpful if down-voter could explain (I might learn something).