Gmail Accidentally Resets 150,000 Accounts 401
tsj5j writes "Many users have reported loss of their Gmail accounts, as they signed in to find their email accounts reset — losing years of email history. This appears to be a result of a bug which treats existing owners as new users. For those affected, Google is currently trying to resolve the problem. For the rest of us, perhaps this is a timely reminder to backup our data and be less trusting of the cloud."
Tag it (Score:2, Funny)
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It was and they did: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/02/0233231/Some-Hotmail-Accounts-Wiped#comments [slashdot.org]
IMAP (Score:5, Insightful)
jdb2
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Do you find leaving mail on a POP3 server is better than downloading locally to an mbox ?
Just wondering what's better for long-term archiving of lots of mail.
Anybody know the limitations of mbox files?
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My policy with mboxes is to never trust them farther than you can kick them. Horrible format.
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A good system might use QMail's maildir format, which is designed to overcome many of the serious problems mbox has.
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Maildir comes with it's own problems when you have lots of mail... You need a file system that is good at having lots of small files (if it needs linear time to look through a directory, that might be a serious issue), and you're going to kill the inode cache everytime you scan your mailbox.
That's why most serious email systems use some kind of indexing, together with either mbox or maildir. Indexing solves most of the porblems of mbox, and also most of the problems of maildir, if all the programs that to
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I prefer a "distributed backup" (pst files on every user's computer with a general backup manager). Yeah, I know. It's way harder to manage, but I've had a couple problem with single backup that keeps me from centralize everything. And it's only 70 PCs so it's not a big deal (larger infrastructures are another story).
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Do you find leaving mail on a POP3 server is better than downloading locally to an mbox ?
One thing to be careful about, if you meant download and then delete from the server, is having access when you're not "local". I used to do this and screwed myself over once when I needed access to a particular email while on travel.
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Ditto on the Thunderbird/IMAP bit.
Re:IMAP - More efficient storage alternative? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, Thunderbird doesn't appear to have the most efficient mail store for Gmail accounts, due to Gmail's system of supporting single messages with multiple labels (folders). If I have messages with multiple labels, it appears that Thunderbird downloads and stores the message multiple times, in multiple disk files.
Is anyone aware of an alternative that "intelligently" supports Gmail? I.E., simply downloading "All Mail", and then creating a database from each label to the associated Message-ID's i
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Does Tbird even store all that stuff locally? It always seems to connect whenever I search (though my profile is 13GB). I agree with you on the annoying way it shows multiple instances of the same email.
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I wouldn't trust Thunderbird not to mess this up...
For a Mozilla product, TB is really poor.
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Re:IMAP sync (Score:4, Interesting)
I suppose a prudent question: when you do an IMAP sync, does it wipe off the local copies just when the remote copy has been flagged deleted, or does it also go further: if you sync to a "reset" remote account, would Tbird's IMAP recognize the local emails no longer exist at the remote and toast your local folders? Will IMAP sync easily upload a whole gmail mailbox back up to a reset account? Time to look at IMAP protocol a little more closely, since we can't 'reset' our own gmail accounts this way to test recovery techniques.
Backing up your local profiles regularly to recover against a "gmail wiped all my emails" or even a "hacker deleted all my emails" scenario would seem a reasonable precaution.
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It shouldn't. If the emails have gone but the index is still there then Thunderbird will just fail to get the new mail that doesn't exist. It wont concern itself with old mail, since according to the index it's up-to-date on those files.
If the index has also been cleared, then perhaps. I'm not sure if Thunderbird requires an expunge or delete in order to delete files. Here's another of those times a mail client that actually implemented IMAP would be nice - you could look at the RFC and find the expected be
I think I'd be okay if my inbox got erased.. (Score:5, Funny)
At least, I wouldn't then have to clean it.
What idiot trusts the cloud? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, even its name is vaporous.
Re:Cloud (Score:3)
But it's so soft and fluffy and will cradle you in a cushion of customer service who will get you back up and running in no time! /humor
Clouds are actually quite violent inside. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm an instrument-rated private pilot and have flown small aircraft into clouds probably hundreds of times. They are not soft and fluffy at all, but are very turbulent and sometimes even quite violent inside. Even the "little puffy" isolated clouds you often see floating along on a warm spring afternoon can shake up a 3000 pound fully-loaded Cessna 182 very strongly.
Re:What idiot trusts the cloud? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What idiot trusts the cloud? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not everyone has an IT staff. I would prefer that CEOs DIDNT "take responsibility" for their own data, as thats not really their core competency.
Who do you trust more to keep things operational, a PHB of a 10 employee startup, or Google's Docs team?
How many people really know how to do backups? (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that everyone should personally handle backing up their email is insanity. If you're a professional at this stuff, then fine, do it at home as well. But for nearly everyone in the population, gmail is going to be vastly more reliable than any backup scheme they come up with at home.
For the average smtp/pop user, email works like this:
1. Grab all the new messages off the server.
2. Read a few, respond to fewer.
3. Leave all of them on the PC's non-backed-up hard drive forever.
4. Eventually buy a new computer, losing all previous messages.
5. Discard the old computer with all the old mail sitting wide open on the HD, along with Quicken, etc., for any attacker who happens upon it.
Gmail is a _vast_ improvement in security and reliability over what non-technical people wind up doing with smtp-based mail.
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The idea that everyone should personally handle backing up their email is insanity. If you're a professional at this stuff, then fine, do it at home as well. But for nearly everyone in the population, gmail is going to be vastly more reliable than any backup scheme they come up with at home.
Backing up your hosted email doesn't mean having to run your own SMTP daemon... I don't see how making a backup of cloud hosted data could be construed as bad advice. It's not hard to use an IMAP client that stores a copy of messages locally, and no matter how bad the user's backups are, Gmail + some local backup is better than Gmail + no local backup.
This isn't the first time Google has lost email [techcrunch.com] and it won't be the last.
Re:What idiot trusts the cloud? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be interesting to see how many users had their hard drive crash and lost everything yesterday.
Re:What idiot trusts the cloud? (Score:5, Insightful)
It comes down to who you trust more. I have several clients who are looking at email solutions; two options are "host it inhouse with exchange and backup to tape / backupexec", or "Google Docs, and let a dedicated team handle it".
At the end of the day, they arent going to want to pay for my time to monitor backups, or perform restore testing, or rotate tapes daily. So do i trust that non-technical users will remember to rotate daily (I have several who forget, not realizing its importance despite reminders), or do I trust that Google will overall have less downtime and fewer disasters than a server with no physical monitoring or weekly maintenance?
I will note that gMail's track record is pretty darn good since its inception; I only remember seeing 2-3 other stories like this in that time, with % affected being very low in a few cases, and I do not ever remember seeing a permenant data-loss scenario. Contrast to the real world, where I go to do a restore for said clients, and it turns out they havent rotated tapes in ages, or the tape drive has needed cleaning for years, or their online backup that they picked out (sans my advice) doesnt actually capture exchange or system state... etc.
So sure, make claims that "the cloud" is untrustworthy... but there are scores of companies that rely on consultants for server setup and then never have an IT person set foot in the "server room" for several years thereafter-- and thats PRECISELY the market that "the cloud" is perfect for. You offload IT work from non-skilled folks to skilled folks, with the downside of relying on connectivity (though gmail has offline mode...).
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Can you have the same uptime for FREE with your own server? of course not since you actually have to either buy a server and pay the electricity bill or rent a dedicated/shared server somewhere but still pay a fee
I have been using gmail for more than six years now and I had
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What idiot trusts the cloud? I mean, even its name is vaporous.
How important is your personal email?
I have two gmail accounts. One of them I'd hardly notice if it got reset. The other one, I might be mildly annoyed for about a minute, but then I'd get over it and continue happily using it.
The cloud is appropriate for some uses. I want access to my email from anywhere, I don't want to manage it, and there's nothing overly private about the data— 50% of the emails I get are short reminders that I send to myself when I'm at work and think of something I'll need to d
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Only I value my data enough to protect it properly (Score:5, Insightful)
There is only one person in the world who values my data enough to protect it properly, and that person is me.
Re:Only I value my data enough to protect it prope (Score:5, Insightful)
There is only one person in the world who values my data enough to protect it properly, and that person is me.
...And I don't eve trust that person to do it properly.
Re:Only I value my data enough to protect it prope (Score:5, Funny)
...And I don't eve trust that person to do it properly.
After all, a simple typo can completely screw up the meaning of an automated backup script!
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Re:Only I value my data enough to protect it prope (Score:4, Insightful)
There is only one person in the world who values my data enough to protect it properly, and that person is me.
Dam right. Trusting your email to a company who's main business is mining data can't be safe either. Having your data spread out over god knows how many countries and subject to the whims of who knows what government agencies doesn't sound like a good idea.
I run my own mail server and do nightly backups of my whole mailstore. Any decent linux admin should be able to setup a cheap virtual machine and a BackupPC server at home to do the same. In fact any decent linux admin should enjoy setting it up.
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And what do you do when your house burns to the ground with both your cheap virtual machine and BackupPC?
If you were competent you will have arranged an off-site backup, maybe not every day but at least occasionally.
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That's what THEY want you to think!
Trust != Competence. (Score:3)
Yay cloud. (Score:2, Funny)
Yay cloud.
Seems like a good place to suggest backup solution (Score:5, Informative)
A stand-alone application seems the safest way to go. Personally, I use MailStore [mailstore.com] (free home edition) to ensure a local backup of my Gmail mails.
I suspect offline access via Gears wouldn't help much in this case. It's supposed to stay in sync so I guess logging into an empty account would sync the local gears data into oblivion as well. The same would presumably be true of a local IMAP client (though that could at least be recovered from a backup and then opened in offline mode).
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An empty account would likely (maybe?) not have offline access enabled, and it is disabled by default. Possibly it could help.
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How do you access the backup if mailstore folds? Is the database in a cleartext or html readable format, or is it proprietary? I couldn't find the answers on the website, as everything is geared (naturally) toward the paid version.
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You can export to a number of file formats (Outlook, Thunderbird, plain text files etc), as well dumping it to an IMAP account or via SMTP.
I haven't paid anything for this but (Score:5, Funny)
I demand my money back!
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Google already did.
Check your account transcript; you will find you recieved exactly nothing from Google.
The cloud (Score:2)
...and be less trusting of the cloud.
Sorry, can't. I don't trust it at all.
Gmail-Backup (Score:5, Informative)
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That page doesn't render for me in Firefox or Chrome. View source draws a complete blank as well. Slashdotted or otherwise broken?
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Google reset it.
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that links to a blank page, or is that a joke ?
Checking that link through google, I see the following in cache:
Warning: User 'drupal_16www7606.gmail-backup.com' has exceeded the 'max_questions' resource (current value: 10000) query: SELECT CASE WHEN status=1 THEN 0 ...
Most amusing
Gmail has always been somewhat of a crapshoot (Score:2)
Re:Gmail has always been somewhat of a crapshoot (Score:4, Insightful)
Happened with Bigfoot.com. They advertised free unlimited email, then one day they started limiting it to 20 messages a day. I left them as soon as I was able to change all the accounts pointing to it.
Now I have my own domain, and while it's on a CPanel-based box somewhere in Texas, I can do regular nightly backups of everything, and if I need to can move it to another host and simply change the DNS.
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[...] I also know of so many stories of people close to me who have lost their gmail accounts [...]
I know somebody who's got his gmail password stolen and changed. He's locked out from his mail now and no, there are no local backups. That made me like even more my habit of using gmail only as a POP3 server and download everything to my notebook. I sync it to my netbook with unison when I need my updated mail on the smaller box. I've got some gmail accounts (1 mine + a few customers) and some other POP3 ones for my own companies and but one can't leave anything important there. I'm at about 101,000 messag
Mistakes or Karma (Score:2)
I suspect this bug was avoidable. The thing with Google is they are learning what it's like when you abandon the policy of doing no evil. You lose sight of the important things like minimalism, reduction of bloat, and overall user satisfaction.
They are no longer reliable.
The replacement for Google will do the following:
1. Create stable search with minimalist reliable results, perhaps P2P generated.
2. Not cater to douchebags on the internet trying to get rich quick.
3. Supply secure/reliable minimalist email
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10. Become the new search engine of choice and cruft out every offering with stupid and useless javascript misfeatures, dirty datamining tricks, and other miscellaneous trash .
It's the circle of fail. </EltonJohn>
User education about faults and backups needed (Score:2)
There are far too few people who understand the danger of having only one copy of information, and people seem even more naive when that copy is help by another party (they assume that someone else is dealing with it, and seem to expect there will be some sort of come-back if the service they pay nothing for loses some of their info).
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While there are not (as yet, as far as I've seen) any people yelling and shouting for heads to role because some of their precious data is lost, I expect it to start soon.
There are far too few people who understand the danger of having only one copy of information, and people seem even more naive when that copy is help by another party (they assume that someone else is dealing with it, and seem to expect there will be some sort of come-back if the service they pay nothing for loses some of their info).
The expectation is that the 3rd party (Google in this case) are doing the backing up for you. If you were paying for Google Apps, you'd make damned sure your contract says so. As a free GMail user, I admit I haven't read the small print recently, but my assumption is that my data is "backed up". "Backed up" in quotes, because rather than there being a regular copy made to tape or whatever, their storage grid inherently has everything in multiple places.
They seem to be saying they'll recover the mailboxes in
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I know one place where the value of backups is learned hard and fast: Grad School. I warned my classmates (read: I explained to them how paranoid I was) but everyone scoffed until on of them lost 6 months of thesis work. Never have I seen the phrase "spooked the herd" so convincingly demonstrated. Next thing you knew "saving" your work meant clicking save (to thumbdrive), clicking print, clicking email-to, and copy-to-network. We had two more people "lose work" who were subsequently saved by the process
Re:User education about faults and backups needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, I think that for most people this just isn't a concern.
Most folks have been bitten by the lack of a backup at some point. You can't tell me they've never been working on a paper for a class and had the machine crap out on them - losing many pages of work. You can't tell me they've never been playing a game and had the machine crap out on them - losing a couple hours of progress. You can't tell me they've never sent an SD card through the laundry - losing some irreplaceable photos. You can't tell me they've never clicked "submit" on some forum comment or Facebook post and had the website malfunction - losing whatever witty thoughts they had at the time.
It happens all the freaking time.
But, for the most part, that information isn't all that valuable.
Folks will curse and mutter... And then re-type their paper, or re-play the game, or live without those pictures.
Folks won't feel like they need to back up their data until they're really burned by it. Just telling people that they need to make backups is not enough. Just teaching it in class isn't enough. Folks need to lose something that they care about.
Not good but backups are your friend. (Score:2)
This is a bit of a worry, as I am considering moving a client over to google apps sometime eventually.
I myself have a LOT on my gmail I should probably backup but I do understand it's my responsibility, even though I don't have one at the moment.
I wonder if there's a simple sure fire way of grabbing the whole lot once every 3 months, anyone know a tool to do this?
Also since this is as good a place to ask as any, how many here have moved business' over to Google Apps for mail? I am considering doing so, but
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Aren't "labels" the solution to that in gmail?
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Labels are how folders are actually handled. An email would get multiple labels per folder.
So
Inbox \ Client \ Project #222 \ Customer Name \ Visa
Would get FIVE labels on it - and there seems to be a limit or punctuation limit and so on for those.
You have to remember, these end users need to use an IMAP'd version of Outlook. Suggesting they use plain old Gmail won't work for them :/ (and as someone who uses a lot of mail, I'd agree - Outlook is actually a very good mail client)
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If you use a forward slash instead of backward in the folder name, you might trick your mail client to arrange the mail in a tree structure. I noticed this with GMail in Evolution on Ubuntu.
YMMV.
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If you use a forward slash instead of backward in the folder name, you might trick your mail client to arrange the mail in a tree structure. I noticed this with GMail in Evolution on Ubuntu.
YMMV.
That's not so much tricking the client, but rather a feature that Google added to GMail a few years ago. If you put a slash in a label name it makes nested folders in IMAP, and also if you go into the Labs settings in GMail, there's a "Nested Labels" lab you can enable to get it in the web interface.
Unacceptable! We demand ..... (Score:2)
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How do they make a profit off gmail exactly? I don't recall ever seeing any ads on it. How does happy translate into money from an e-mail account?
Not looked very hard, have you?
GMail ads aren't very intrusive, but they're worryingly well targeted.
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Go into a conversation and look to the right.
Unless you have adblock, there's something special about your chosen skin, or you're paying for GMail.
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6603 [google.com]
I also have a single line ad immediately above the "Archive" button - dunno why you don't.
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Point it out to me, please [dropbox.com].
On the right [imgur.com]
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I think GP expected you to have noted the adverts before blocking them.
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Compose a message and look on the right of the textbox you type the message in.
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GMAil needs better bkup system (Score:2)
I want gmail to offer an image system, where by you ask to download an image (zipped of course) of the current state of your email folders and configs and all contacts, into a nicely zipped file. Then you can restore or backup using the notion as in VSS, which makes it very easy to maintain backups for individuals, especially those that do not want to wait long hours to use something crappy like outlook to manage their backups of emails. Also it would solve the bulk upload/download situation...as it would b
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Create backup account to stay in synch (Score:3)
.edu Ramifications (Score:3)
this is easier to shrug off if you think of it as just average users using gmail. in general it's a personal mail and not intended for business. still hurts but there's only you to be upset.
the university i work at is working on migrating towards gmail for .edu domains. we have already moved our alumni to gmail and are progressing towards all students, faculty and staff on gmail.
It would be quite the s*hitstorm if some or most of our employees lost their email.
Maybe could be a new feature? (Score:2)
For those of us who does not care can this be added as a new feature to clean out our mailbox rather than manually deleting junk mail a page at a time.
Not so much of a story, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has already stated they have a resolution, but it may take a little time to implement. They have backups, and will restore the accounts. This seems like a case of:
Something went wrong, they're fixing it.
The End.
Re:Not so much of a story, really (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not so much of a story, really (Score:4, Informative)
They do that often. We get tons of people complaining that the cloud isn't reliable (mylself included), some people arguing that the cloud is more reliable than most PC out there, some people arguing you should have a backup, and some people arguing that Hotmail is crap and asking if somebody still uses it.
Well, the only difference I can see is that there is nobody arguing that gmail is crap and asking if somebody still uses it.
An opportunity to start afresh (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps living in Africa has given me a liaise faire approach to archiving mail. Life goes on with or without your years of email. In my working career I have always diligently backed up all mailboxes as I moved from one exchange server to another all with the belief that one day I would go back and read through my mails. I have never done this and I doubt I will be doing so in the near future. Over the years I have lost/misplaced some of the DVDs containing my vast collection of email and I have never felt the need to dig through the attic to locate some DVD with an important email stored on it.
I am struggling to read through my day to day mail. I am not going to bother setting up a backup server because I do not have the time to maintain it and I doubt I will do a better job that the "professionals" at Google. To those who lost their data I feel your pain but believe me there are worse things that can happen in life. Have a glass of wine and start your Inbox afresh.
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Work-email isn't backed up because you think someday you're going to read it. It's to cover your ass down the line when the shit hits the fan. Like when you get accused of violating a patent, but your email proves that you were doing it years before the patent was even filed.
Also, it's so you can write snarky emails: "I as I told you on November 17th 2004, in order to..."
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Correct. You have no idea how many people I've managed to drop in it by producing an email record of something. From large suppliers, to tiny little in-house spats, it's invaluable to have a record. Most of the time, I wouldn't have even *thought* of archiving that email specifically, but it ended up being crucial.
As a rule, I don't drop people in it, but when the finger points, some people will do ANYTHING to avoid the blame, even when they KNEW it was their fault. Rather than put their hands up, they'
Isn't it still BETA (Score:2)
Google's prototype notebook (Score:2)
the sig ! (Score:2)
read the sig !
In other words.... (Score:2)
Syncplicity (Score:3)
For the rest of us, perhaps this is a timely reminder to backup our data and be less trusting of the cloud.
Pardon the slashvertisement, but Syncplicity [syncplicity.com] lets you synchronize Google Docs with a folder on multiple computers. You can choose either Word or OpenOffice formats; and then edit Google Docs files in Word or Open Office, even without an internet connection. The changes then are uploaded into Google Docs.
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How good are they? Most very cheap VPS are extremely over subscribed...
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Aren't those ones generally rather cloudy, though?
It's still cloud computing, even if you throw yet another layer of abstraction over the top of it.
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sudo apt-get install rsnapshot
I can't compare it to backup-manager because I never tried it. rsnapshot is based on rsync so you can use it to backup remote sites as well. I've made rsnapshot to run a command to dump the database of a remote server first and then rsync it to the backup disk on my local machine. It works also for server to server backups or client to server: rsnapshot must run on the server and be able to access the client, probably using ssh keys. I never tried that and yes, technically spea
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Or, perhaps, offline-imap or fetchmail if all you're looking to back up is your mail.
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When I buy expensive hosting (cloud based), I expect backups, quick service, etc. The point of the "cloud" is that data is distributed and redundant. However, just like deleting all the files on a file server with RAID, you can lose your data when someone deletes something in the cloud. This should not be a shock to anyone. You are correct that how Google handles this situation is more important that how the data is hosted.
It does make me wonder what would happen if a cloud service company went out of b