Slashdot Mirror
Hotmail Loses Customer Files
Rick Zeman writes "News.com is reporting that Microsoft's Hotmail service has lost customers' files 'due to 'system events.' The particular user cited, of course, has no recourse because of the broad disclaimers companies such as Microsoft hide behind; however, you are getting what you pay for. The scariest part of the article, however, is when a spokesman for iBackup, an Internet-based backup company, disclaims,'We do not provide a 100 percent guarantee that the backup will take place' of customers' data being stored with them for a fee."
I also had a nightmare at one stage with Hotmail. I logged on one day and everything in sent items was gone. It was due to 'changes in service'. I was not amused and of course there is no way one can actually contact Hotmail - hell I don't know where this woman found their number! I'm impressed.
Needless to say I changed provider which is also free and gives me 6Mb instead of 2 (mail.vu).
In the real world, yes, 100% does exist. Several of our systems here at work are guarenteed to be up 100% of the time, and 100% of our data backed up for a rollback period of a month (meaning we can roll back the server to any day in the past month in case of a disaster)
So how is this possible? Easy; have a competent IT staff. A monkey can administer a properly working backup system, and if you want to stay in the managed hosting business, a working backup system is absolutely essential. Obviously there's no way those systems can be up 100% of the time, but that's not the point. The point is that 100% of the time, you are getting the maximum utilization and productivity off of the service.
What happens when a server goes down? Well, the same things that happen in unguarenteed services, but with one exception: we get compensated. As per our contract, we get paid a flat fee for every minute we cannot use our system in its normal capacity. This is the essence of any business guarentee: they aren't saying they'll be up all the time, they are saying that if the off chance of a downtime does occur, you will be properly compensated.
Outlook 2002+, or recent versions Outlook Express allow you to add Hotmail as an email provider. You can then drag and drop your folders to your local PST, and back that up.
PRECISELY.
If you can't bear the idea of something being lost, it's YOUR JOB to do what's necessary to save it.
Alexandria Felton logged on to her Hotmail account last month and was shocked to find that all of her saved files were gone.
At stake was years' worth of personal and business correspondence, photos and the itinerary for a recently purchased trip...
Alexandria is a moron. It's a *free* service, you get what you pay for. No backup medium is 100% reliable, but most reasonable people would consider Hotmail to be a particularly stupid place to keep important information.
-Styopa
Pretty easy.
Thunderbird->Tools->Offline & Disk Space->Make the messages in my Inbox available when I am working offline (check).
Then feel free to back up the local files as you please.
Bonus points for saying 'raises an interesting question' rather than 'begs the question'.
-Reid
Hotmail Popper lets you use your favourite email program with hotmail, works fine with Thunderbird.
Hotmail forwarding is intentionally very weak.
You can only forward one message at a time.
It is designed to keep you and your data captive.
So, migrating many messages off would be very time consuming. It recently became even worse when they shifted the 'view mail' function to javascript. Now you can only open one window to your mbox at a time (vs. multiple windows with multiple messages, etc).
Oh, and 2001? isn't your article a bit dated...
And finally This Shows that hotmail is currently under IIS5.0. I'm no microsoft troll, but as someone said, they are 'eating their own dog food' on this one.
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
The scariest part of the article, however, is when a spokesman for iBackup, an Internet-based backup company, disclaims,'We do not provide a 100 percent guarantee that the backup will take place' of customers' data being stored with them for a fee."
Scary? No, that's plain honesty. Which should be respected.
You think? I'm the poster of the article and those were my exact words (though they took out my GMail question....). I think that your example is extreme: you're looking at there's no 100% guarantee of your data being safe for perpetuity. My point is that sentence lets them off the hook for ever backing up your data, much less being ever to restore it. The heck with gamma rays. What about if Johnny, Janey or Siri deletes the wrong directory? "Well, we never backed up your files...."
That doesn't cut it. Shit happens, but that doesn't mitigate not even trying.
You're paying for a service for them that they should be providing. Hotmail is a different story entirely (hence my 'you're getting what you pay for" line).
Reminds me of this guy's story.
A good reason is that you can change ISPs w/o changing email addresses. Yes, yes, I know you can buy your own domain for $8 a year and have it hosted somewhere for $5 a month to keep your john.do@my.domain.com email address, but most people won't because it costs more than a free hotmail/yahoo/gmail account.
Anyone running a Linux box can use hotwayd to access their Hotmail account through a POP client like Mozilla Mail. Since Mozilla has such fantastic junk mail filters, it easily gets the two or so messages that Hotmail's filter misses. I have mailing lists that I subscribed to through Hotmail, so keeping mail on their servers is not a viable option.
However, anyone running a business on one of these services is counting on the reliability of delivery, which you might not get if you ran your own domain off a DSL line. Reliability of storage is a totally different matter. Anyone running a medium business off Hotmail accounts deserves what they get. At that point they should get serious and look into at least a server closet with UPS, partial T1, etc.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
With the way people move from their ISP from service to service, its nice to have a consistent email address as you float around.
But why use Hotmail? There are other, better free mail services out there.
Fastmail.FM is a good one--pretty reliable, and it even has free IMAP access. You have to provide your own SMTP server tho, if you don't want to pay Fastmail.FM for one--but that's ok...I don't know of an ISP that doesn't provide for one, anyway.
Its web-based interface is also pretty sweet--it's very sleek and minimalist (far more than Hotmail or Yahoo), and you have a choice of style sheets to choose from. You can even upload your own CSS if you don't like any of the pre-made ones.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Incidentally hotmail spam is unblockable. I.E. The unrequested marketing that hotmail sends you, if you try and block the address it says you can't, so that hotmail can send you "important" information.
im in ur
I went to check it out and saw that it isn't free anymore (you can try it for 100 messages). Then i found MrPostman and that works great !!
Many internet cafe's will - for a small fee - burn you a CD of your data. Of course, for hotmail you would have to paste your emails into word, notepad, whatever - but many of the less-computer-literate type have mastered the copy+paste functions.
It's a pain in the butt, but for some better than losing any "important" data.
I use hotmail as a "catchall" for people and companies that send me crap. I also use it to read POP mail at work. For $19.95 a year, it seemed like a good bargain. I always swore I would never keep anything there that was "valuable," because I knew MS would never guarantee availability.
What ended up happening is that I was in the middle of an ISP migration, and used Hotmail on March 30th to download all my remaining POP messages that I kept stored (e.g. important or frequently-accessed messages) on my ISP's server before my account was deactivited. Typically I would then go home and import that mail from Hotmail into a local mail file. What actually happened was I got busy for a couple of days, and when I logged in on 4/1 (April fool's day!) I had an empty Hotmail box.
I complained and got a form letter response a couple of days later, saying they hoped I understood, but they had experienced a system "event" and were working to restore data. Anything not restored within 72 hours would not be recovered. Thank you for understanding.
I never got a single message back. Fortunately, none of the info I lost was business-related, only family and event planning data, but it goes to show what MS gives you, even when you PAY for service.
Because, when you go away, your email address goes away too. My first email address was one at my university. Due to some snafu, my email account was completely deleted. When it was finally reinstated, they issued me a completely different username because I'd changed my major. As a result, there were people and friends who my only point of contact was through that address -- and I have never been able to make contact with them again.
I encountered the problem again when I entered the workforce. As I switched jobs, the email address I'd been using dropped away into the ether, never to be seen or accessed again. If any important mails went there, I never got them. Ditto with ISPs. I switch ISPs often enough for this to be a real problem.
So, what did I do? I got a hotmail email. No, it's not perfect, and there are many things I hate about it (especially the way it's gotten more 'Microsofty' over the years), but it's free, and I never ever have to worry about it going away or becoming inaccessable.
-------------------------------------------------