Gmail Does Magic: 60 Users Suffer 100% E-mail Loss

[kcnychief]

Rather Scary - have you guys seen this yet? Read the article and most importantly some comments in Google Groups...

Gmail is at it yet again and this time they are performing magic tricks that many of us have never seen first-hand…they are making your email messages disappear before your very eyes! Hey, I never said it was a positive magic trick, now did I?

TechCrunch reported on this happening earlier today and received this response from Google regarding the situation:

Regretfully, a small number of our users — around 60 — lost some or all of their email received prior to December 18th. Once we found out about this issue, we worked day and night to confirm that only a few accounts were affected and to do whatever we could to restore as much of the users’ accounts as we could. We’ve also reached out to the people who were affected to apologize and to work with them to restore the email from any personal backup they might have.
We know how important Gmail is to our users – we use it ourselves for our corporate email. We have extensive safeguards in place to protect email stored with Gmail and we are confident that this is a small and isolated incident.

Source: http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/12/28/gmail-does-magic-makes-emails-disappear/

Google Group Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/Gmai...read/thread/e19d6ab5d41e58eb/bd2a9386c2a1ad41

-edit-

I have checked all my accounts and everything seems to be in order.

 

[Vanquished]

So...
What do the 60 people whos lives are all messed up get?
I know if i lost all my emails i would be wicked messed up.

 

[kcnychief]

If you read most of the information posted within that, you would see most people are getting nothing. Some, but only a small portion, are getting partial amounts of e-mail restored.

Google T.O.S. clearly states that regardless of their backup methods, they are under no obligation to restore any data in the event of a loss.

I think the matter is still being looked into though.

 

[Vanquished]

Man, i bet they lost those members.
I would have expected some sort of reparations for this grave mistake.

 

[madmatt]

If you RELY on your email then don't use an online service such as Google, Yahoo!, or Hotmail/Windows Live.

 

[Vanquished]

I dont RELY on it.
But it would certainly be a major inconvenience in my life.
What if i had passwords and stuff there for steam and such.
Also, i do have important emails on gmail, though sparse.

 

[SPeedY_B]

If you RELY on your email then don't use an online service such as Google, Yahoo!, or Hotmail/Windows Live.

So true. If their mail was important, they should of been retrieving a local copy via POP3.

 

[Vanquished]

So true. If their mail was important, they should of been retrieving a local copy via POP3.

Well maybe they dont know how to do that.
I wouldnt waste time setting up an outlook account.
I mean, this isn't alright, sure Gmail is not obligated to do anything, but people expect that their emails are secure, and will be there...

 

[Brad]

Anyone relying on a BETA for their production environment deserves what is coming to them.

 

[Vanquished]

Anyone relying on a BETA for their production environment deserves what is coming to them.

Oh come on, a BETA?
how long has gmail been on the web, 2 - 3 yrs?
Beta my arse

 

[kcnychief]

They still have it labeled as a Beta

User should still be aware of what needs to be backed up if things are so critical to them though. You could use the POP3 feature, forward to another account as a failsafe, etc.

 

[madmatt]

If you rely on your email then don't use online services. =)

 

[Evil Marge]

Any important info I get through email I'll copy and paste in notepad then save it somewhere safe, it's habit and as I hate having loads of emails stored I can then just delete them.

 

[Brad]

Oh come on, a BETA?
how long has gmail been on the web, 2 - 3 yrs?
Beta my arse

Nevertheless, it is still a beta. I maintain that if you are using it in a production environment with no recourse, you deserve what is coming to you.

 

[kcnychief]

Somewhat unrelated, but still interesting

http://www.internet-nexus.com/2006/12/firefox-developer-doesnt-trust-google.htm

 

[damnyank]

Gmail - that rings a bell! Oh yea, I've got a Gmail acount and I just checked it and all 1344 spam messages and 10 regular messages are still there. I think I'll wipe oiut the SPAM just for grins. Awhhhhh, that felt good! :crosseyed:

 

[vern]

meh, I use Gmail as a POP3 account. I only use the web interface if I want to write something real quick and I'm not on my desktop.

 

[vertigo]

i agree, if your emails are that important you would use an email client like outlook or thunderbird. and it takes all of 5 minutes to set up, complete step-by-step instructions for a bunch of clients are given by google/gmail. at least that's how long it took me.

twas a bit of a wakeup call i bet

 

[Johnny]

I haven't been on my GMail account in months. I got tired of all the spam I was getting. It was starting to be worse than yahoo and hotmail ...

 

[kcnychief]

I haven't been on my GMail account in months. I got tired of all the spam I was getting. It was starting to be worse than yahoo and hotmail ...

Gmail has pretty solid spam detection actually - I get a lot of it but it all goes to my spam folder.