Massive Email Crash Hits Canadian ISP Shaw 150
rueger writes "One of Canada's biggest cable/Internet providers has their customers in an outrage. '... after an interruption of Shaw's email services Thursday led to millions of emails being deleted ... About 70 per cent of Shaw's email customers were affected when the company was troubleshooting an unrelated email delay problem and an attempted solution caused incoming emails to be deleted ... Emails were deleted for a 10-hour period between 7:45 a.m. and 6:15 p.m. Thursday, although customers did not learn about the problem until Friday, and only then by calling customer service or accessing an online forum for Shaw Internet subscribers.' To top it off, when Shaw did send out notices about this, they looked so much like every day phishing spam that many people deleted them unread."
Re:Sometimes it's better to copy and forward... (Score:5, Informative)
Not an "Isolated event" (Score:2, Informative)
From TFA : "The mistake was an “isolated event,” Lakshman said, and promised a detailed review, which would include a discussion about compensation."
Except it isn't. Few years ago I had a business's domain email hosted with Shaw (was included with the internet service and they provided IMAP), and they lost all of it. They wouldn't return my calls about it, and on the third time I called in a week or so later I was told it would not be recoverable, that there is no backup for their business email service at all, instead they would credit the account ~5 days of internet service. I was floored, but was too busy to get into it with them and I had our email backed up so I just moved on with a email hosting provider I felt more confident about.
Shaw's internet service has been decent, but I wouldn't trust them as anything more then a data pipe.
Even though I agree (Score:0, Informative)
with your comment, I modded you down because it began in the title
Re:I thought MY US ISP sucked donkey schlongs... (Score:2, Informative)
I work for TELUS, and can assure you that optik tv is NOT a satellite service. It is an IPTV service being delivered over either ADSL 2+ or VDSL connections (and sometimes fibre in new areas).
Satellite tv is offered in areas where we don't have the broadband infrastructure to support standard Optik TV. However we refer to that as TELUS satellite TV and not Optik tv.
I don't believe TELUS ever claimed optik was FTTH. The optik name refers to the fact that it is served by our new fibre network. The "last mile" is still copper in most neighbourhoods though (past the DSLAM essentially).
Minor part of your post i know, but thought i would help clarify since you seemed to be confused on what optik is.
Cheers.
http://www.telus.com/content/tv/sat/
http://www.telus.com/content/tv/optik/index.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telus_TV
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This post reflects my own views and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer.
What? (Score:5, Informative)
"To top it off, when Shaw did send out notices about this, they looked so much like every day phishing spam that many people deleted them unread."
Erm. No they didn't? I'm looking at one right now and it doesn't look remotely like 'every day phishing spam'. It doesn't offer me anything, threaten me with anything, or ask me to click on anything. It doesn't include any links except to a forum thread, which the text doesn't make any special effort to make you click on. It didn't trigger my mental 'phishing detector' in the slightest.
I got the email notification late Saturday, two days after the event happened, I guess. That's not a horrible delay. I also saw a bunch of delayed mails come through around that time - 10 or so - and they notified me of the sender and subject line of three mails that were lost, so looks like they managed to recover quite a lot.
I dunno, I guess I'm not TOTALLY OUTRAGED at this. As another commenter said, you know, admins screw up sometimes. Lord knows I have. The fact that they're at least able to identify the subject lines of all the lost mails makes a big difference; you could get any really vital ones re-sent.
Re:It's Shaw. This is not surprising. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Email is designed for this. (Score:4, Informative)
The emails were received and accepted, but then deleted. There is nothing your MTA is going to do about this.