Some Hotmail Accounts Wiped 298
tomhudson writes "PC Magazine reports that many Hotmail accounts have lost all their emails. Users' entire email histories have apparently been lost. 'Users can still log in sans issue. However, they arrive at empty inboxes: No custom folders, no messages in "Sent" or "Deleted," nothing. As one might expect, the abruptness (and unexpectedness) of the purge has left some of Hotmail's long-time users a bit in the dark.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
"MS's Hotmail specifically says they're not responsible for loss of data"
Whereas the likely truth is that they _are_ responsible for loss of data, but they don't _accept_ responsibility.
What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
You gets what you pays for. You're paying nothing except your privacy - which corporations demonstrably don't value highly - in exchange for a webmail service. One which explicitly declares in its terms and conditions that you have no expectation of data integrity.
And if you only ever use the web interface, there isn't even any chance that you've mirrored your mail to your local computer. Webmail relieves you of the responsibility of installing a mail client, backing up your data, etc.
Now everything is going "cloud", I can see a gap in the market for "family cloud" appliances - plonk them on your home network, trust a few similar units on the networks of family members, and get the benefits of redundant backups, mail service, etc, exchanging the cost of your privacy for a few hundred dollars.
To The Cloud! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Long term hotmail users? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do trust Gmail to have better data integrity because they are more open about their architecture and having read about it, I think it's well designed.
I don't have any expectation of them caring about my email apart from its data-mining value though.
Do you have any idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you? The author used it in a perfectly acceptable manner. "Sans" means "without". So "Users can still log in sans issue." can be read as "Users can still log in without issue." That describes the situation perfectly. Users can log in just fine, but they can't view their messages.
I appreciate it when people criticize the authors or submitters for their stupidity or ignorance, but that's just not the case here. You are the one who is in the wrong, and we should criticize you.
No need for local backup (Score:3, Insightful)
Yahoo email. (Score:4, Insightful)
About two years ago Yahoo changed some back end stuff to rid of the country based email system (I was .au) they had and to centralise everything. In the change many peoples accounts got wiped or they got locked out of their accounts. I got locked out of my account and couldn't remember what smart ass answer I had put in to the secret questions over a decade ago. Yahoo refuse to do anything if you can't get past the secret question and so now I have nothing to do with them.
P.S. Secret questions are the worst "security" feature ever. Either they are far too obvious and easy for casual acquaintances and Internet detectives to break (ala Sarah Palin) or you never remember the stupid shit you put in them many years in the past.
Re:Long term hotmail users? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. I would never use any web-based email service which didn't support pop/imap.
If your emails are important, it's simply stupid to rely on an external service to whom your account's integrity is of little consequence. Nothing beats having a local copy and doing your own backups.
Speaking of backups, there was a short period of time when the average person was just starting to get the idea of doing regular backups of their info (it's unbelievable that no OS I've seen has an intelligent backup service). But now we're seeing web services for frickin everything (so they can sell our lives to advertisers) and the average person is going to get *less* computer literate, not more.