Hotmail Loses Customer Files

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Friday June 4, 2004 @12:09AM from the whoops-our-bad dept.

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."

19 of 388 comments (clear)

'system events.' by FrivolousPig · 2004-06-04 00:11 · Score: 5, Funny

= blue screen of death

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Vs. Google by MackTK · 2004-06-04 00:12 · Score: 5, Interesting

It will be interesting to see the final EULA for gmail and their stance on loss of data.
they have already lost some info before... by DangerSteel · 2004-06-04 00:14 · Score: 5, Funny

like my e-mail address to every known spammer in the universe. Hell, I'm getting e-mails to enlarge my tentacles and re-grow my third eye through Hotmail...
Backing up IMAP email? by KiwiSurfer · 2004-06-04 00:15 · Score: 5, Interesting

It would also be interesting to look at the paid email providers too. Does the ISPs that offer IMAP hosting do backups of their customer's emails? I quite like the idea of IMAP, but this issue raises an interesting question. With POP3 email, your emails are stored on your own computer, so you can easily backup email. How easy is it to backup and restore IMAP email boxes?
Wow thanks I still have all my Hotmail spam! by Numeric · 2004-06-04 00:15 · Score: 5, Funny

I had to double check my hotmail.com account after reading this alarming post. I was happy to find all my spam still in my account! Thank you to all the Hotmail.com admins.

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who would store this sort of info on hotmail ? by cipher+uk · 2004-06-04 00:15 · Score: 5, Interesting

At stake was years' worth of personal and business correspondence, photos and the itinerary for a recently purchased trip

why would someone store such important info on hotmail ? The notices saying they can't garentee your data won't disappear isn't there for PR. Its obvious things like this can happen so why not store it on something like a floppy. I mean hotmail doesn't even give you a lot of space. I haven't used it for a while but isn't it 3mb ? At least it was a free account and not one where he was paying for extra storage. That would have made it a hell of a lot worse if he was paying for the service.
Scary? by Rufus88 · 2004-06-04 00:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

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."

Duh. There are no 100% guarantees of anything in life. The only significance of any "guarantee" is the recourse the company gives you (e.g. your money back) if they fail to live up to it.There's no guarantee that your in-house backup system won't eat your data. There's no guarantee your brand new car won't explode. There's no guarantee that FedEx will absolutely, positively, not lose your package, let alone get it there overnight.
1. Re:Scary? by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2004-06-04 00:30 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It reads to me that iBackup don't even guarantee that they will even back it up AT ALL. OK I grant that backups can fail, but not backing up at all is pretty sad for a service that has "backup" in its company name! Sounds to me to be a bunch of retards.
  
  At least with FedEx, they will compensate you if they lose the package, provided you declared a value. I think $100 coverage is free with the shipment.
Re:Honesty by gray+code · 2004-06-04 00:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

no, it's not reasonable to demand that they offer 100% coverage, however, if this is a service that costs real money, then if they dick something up, it is completely reasonable to expect reasonable compensation.
Re:Just goes to show you .... by TeraCo · 2004-06-04 00:21 · Score: 5, Funny

I don't see how that will guarantee it.. accidents still happen. Tape drives fail. Hard disks get dropped into tubs of jelly, etc.

The only way to truely secure your data is to hire a team of tibetan monks to each remember 1/5th of it. THen they can sing it back to you.

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Hotmail Mares by sheeny · 2004-06-04 00:21 · Score: 5, Informative

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).
Why would they? by stevens · 2004-06-04 00:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

Why would iBackup offer it? For some reason, software makers (myself included) have been able to get away without guaranteeing anything for a long time. We don't finish projects sometimes, and even if we do, we don't guarantee you even get what you want.

What is interesting, mind you, is that some consider this more realistic. The way Product Liability cases have been going the last 50 years, software is kind of lucky not to be included. Think of the awards for McDonalds coffee 'users;' people who eat glass and complain there was no sticker saying not to.

If we demand courts throw away the disclaimers of liability by companies like iBackup or Microsoft, it could definitely hurt open source. If they throw out Windows' disclaimers of liability the GPL's disclaimer might not be far off. What if people could sue free software authors directly? That would be scary.

It's a double-edged sword, and frankly, I don't know which way I'd like it to go. Anyone?
Re:Just goes to show you .... by PingvinRich · 2004-06-04 00:33 · Score: 5, Funny

The only way to truely secure your data is to hire a team of tibetan monks to each remember 1/5th of it. Then they can sing it back to you.

Better still, hire half a dozen and RAID them.
Re:Just goes to show you .... by DrEldarion · 2004-06-04 00:43 · Score: 5, Funny

Would that be a MONK-5 array or a a Beowolf Cloister?
Re:Honesty by MmmmJoel · 2004-06-04 00:52 · Score: 5, Interesting

"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.

Respected? No way! If it said "we can't provide a 100% guarantee that we can recover the data that we make two different off-site backups for," then I can understand. Or even, "we can only guarantee that 95% of your nighty backups will be successful" is OK.

But the quote says they won't even guarantee it gets backed up at all! They don't even need to attempt it. It's like providing an email service and not guaranteeing that your SMTP server isn't pointing to /dev/null.
Re:Just goes to show you .... by nacturation · 2004-06-04 01:11 · Score: 5, Funny

Redundant Enlightened Array of Monks -- REAM them!

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poor != moron by br3itain · 2004-06-04 01:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

A little wake-up call to the self-satisfied middle class types out there who can't fathom not owning a computer - there are a *lot* of people who can't afford their own PC, let alone subscribe to an ISP. They depend on free access in public libraries for their email (and free internet email accounts like Hotmail). It's pretty hard to back up your emails in that case (many libraries ban the use of floppy disks outright).
Yes, you get what you pay for, but when something like this happens it doesn't necessarily mean the individual is a moron, it means she can't afford anything else.
1. Re:poor != moron by kotj.mf · 2004-06-04 01:34 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Too true. The administration at the large public library where I used to work seemed to view the underpriveledged types who would conduct most of their computing on our Wyse terminals more as unwelcome burdens than as "real" patrons.
  
  These are people who needed to do simple stuff like type out a resume, write a two page book report for school, or whatever. I spent the better part of a year trying to persuade IS to put OpenOffice on a couple of unused PCs we had sitting around, and their response was, essentially, "Microsoft rulez! OOo droolz!"
  
  "So are we going to put MS Office on the PCs for the public instead?"
  
  "No, we can't afford the licenses."
  
  I actually took my case all the way up to administration, and they as much as told me "We're a library, not a community center. They're lucky we don't block Hotmail."
  
  Shit, they even locked the floppy drives on the few actual PCs (rather than Winterms) we had available for the public, to keep people from saving anything.
  
  All this from one of the largest, and supposedly best, public library systems in the country.
  
  I ended up writing a little PHP script that'll spit out either a preformatted resume or a simple letter-type html page and let you print them out from a browser. Took me an hour, and that was mostly getting the tables right for the resumes. The patrons, my immediate boss, and all of my co-workers were thrilled, but all I got from administration was a warning that I shouldn't have developed the app on company time.
  
  Fuckers.
  
  Hotmail, Yahoo, et al provide valuable services to people who couldn't otherwise get them.
  
  Yeah, the corporations behind the services are only doing it to make a buck.
  
  Yeah, they're free, and you get what you pay for.
  
  Yeah, anybody who should know better, and could afford better, who does *anything* critical with Hotmail is an idiot.
  
  But for some people, something is better than nothing.
  
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  hang brain.
Re:Well, you know what they say... by It'sYerMam · 2004-06-04 01:56 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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