Some Hotmail Accounts Wiped

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.'"

Comments

Long term hotmail users?

[Squeeonline]

I would have thought that any long term hotmail users must have been in the dark a long time ago, not to see the light of gmail. /googleFan. We have it forced on us by my university, and as soon as it was possible, I set up everything to forward to my gmail account. Havent had to use the shoddy interface in a long time.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[MoonBuggy]

Although I also prefer Gmail, you're being extremely naive if you think any remotely hosted and controlled service is immune to issues of this nature. This should be as good a reminder as any for all of us to set up local backups for our email services.

On that note, does anyone have any recommendations for backup software/file formats? I seem to remember that last time I looked into the issue there seemed to be some lack of standardisation when looking for an open 'email archive' format to use.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[donotlizard]

I use ABC Amber Outlook Converter. I can save all Outlook emails, or specific folders, to various file formats including HTML and PDF.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[Dr_Barnowl]

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.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[JustOK]

use gmail, then use thunderbird to dl (without deleting from server) and something like mozbackup

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[peragrin]

exactly, which is why I have both Pop and IMAP setup on my gmail account. my phone, most of my computers all use IMAP however one computer is setup to only use POP, and it downloads all saved/ archived mail every time it logs in from it's last login.

this way i have a snapshot of all but the most recent mails on one of my computers, that i can back up.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[__aaqvdr516]

Why not maintain both? It's trivial to setup access through MS mail and Thunderbird. If you do use a mail client, there's no need to use their "shoddy" interface and they all look the same.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[tokul]

I would have thought that any long term hotmail users must have been in the dark a long time ago, not to see the light of gmail.

What light? You are replacing one third party email provider with another and see the light in it? Maybe you see the light comming from the end of tunnel, but I will disappoint you. You are still going to hell.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[tokul]

I looked into the issue there seemed to be some lack of standardisation when looking for an open 'email archive' format to use.

RFC822 and RFC3501 look like standards.

You will need Cyrus or Dovecot, if you want faster fulltext search.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[Hydian]

Why would I move over to my Gmail accounts as my primaries? All of my email accounts look the same both on my phone and in my email client. It all comes to the same place no matter where it is sent to, so it doesn't gain me anything for the effort involved to switch (no matter how minimal.) I already give Google plenty of my data, so spreading it around a bit to make it harder for them to gather is in my best interests.

This is also not the first time that Hotmail has experienced a data loss. It happened several years ago. Any free email service is going to be vulnerable though as it is highly unlikely that they are backing up your data.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[Demonoid-Penguin]

With Hotmail, I don't have to give my cell phone number so that they can send me a text message with a key. That's creepy. I don't want cell phone numbers tied with email accounts and I don't want Google to have that information.

Gmail have special rules just for you? How nice. They don't force me to have a phone number on record.

Now it's me that's sad.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[vbraga]

Try to create a new account. It will ask for a phone number.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have it forced on us by my university, and as soon as it was possible, I set up everything to forward to my gmail account. Havent had to use the shoddy interface in a long time.

(posting AC as I work for a university as $DAYJOB, as an admin for our internal mail systems and the whipping boy for the outsourced live@edu stuff)

A lot of people do that kind of thing, but it's just asking for trouble in my professional opinion.

1 - Depending on where you're forwarding to, the forwarded messages may or may not get through. Hotmail's cloud doesn't exactly have the best reputation - and if a few dozen of your fellow students fall for a phishing scam and that corner of the cloud gets a bad reputation for a while, mail forwarded out of it may or may not be accepted. Add to that the fact that Hotmail now seem to be re-writing the envelope-sender address to your own hotmail/live address for forwarded messages, and neither you nor the sender will find out if it fails unless you check the hotmail/live account periodically. Gmail has a POP pick-up option - use that instead of forwarding, it's a far safer option. Do you really want to risk missing out on receiving important re-enrolment information, or other things that might be inconvenient or costly if lost?

2 - Live@EDU accounts not accessed for more than 270 days go inactive, as Microsoft assume they've been abandoned. They'll stop accepting mail, and they'll purge any existing content. They can be re-activated at any time, but that won't get back what was lost from them or what was bounced while they were inactive. A small but significant number of students will activate their account when they enrol and set forwarding on it, then never access it directly again. This means that at the end of the academic year, just when the re-enrolment information is being sent out, their accounts shut themselves down. Again, that can be lots of fun for all concerned - especially when someone like me proves that we attempted delivery, but that the account went inactive due to the student's neglect.

In all honesty, I can't tell you for sure if POP pickup will keep the account active - if it counts as direct access for Microsoft's activity assessment - because I've never had cause to ask Microsoft about it, but it is certainly more reliable to poll the mailbox and pick up what was accepted by Hotmail than to trust that your other ISP or mail provider will accept everything that comes out of the festering sewer that is the Hotmail cloud. So use POP pickup and make sure you use that "shoddy" Hotmail interface at least once every six months just in case. And if your university is moving to a hosted Exchange solution for student mail under the Live@EDU programme (as we are, once some legal/privacy issues are sorted out for existing accounts), I think you'll find it a lot better anyway.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[hedwards]

I don't trust Gmail not to lose my email, that's why I download all of it to my computer via imap. The nice thing about gmail is that they allow you to upload emails back to the server if need be.

I learned that lesson that time that Google lost those emails and couldn't back them up. Fortunately, I wasn't affected by that.

Even with good design and careful management there's always the possibility of something being lost. Even in the idealized constant backups scenario it might mean that you're without a particular email for a period of time.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[gcerullo]

I've taken the extra step of not only forwarding all email received by my Hotmail account to my Gmail account. I also forward all mail received by my Gmail account to my Hotmail account. Although, shortly after implementing this strategy, I've noticed a lot of duplicate emails in each inbox and my mailboxes keep filling up. It's not even SPAM, it's just the same messages being repeated over and over and over again.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[fishbowl]

>I don't trust Gmail not to lose my email

I don't either, but I also know that so many corporations and organizations use the commercial side of Gmail, that the slightest outage or deletion problem will be met with a lot more noise than I could make. If this same incident happened to Gmail, the story wouldn't just be a tech news article, it would be headline mainstream news.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[Nirac]

I use Thunderbird to save them to eml. Outlook will also save to eml, and I'm sure most desktop clients will as well.

Quoting Wikipedia here, "Used by many email clients including Microsoft Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird.[36] The files are plain text in MIME format, containing the email header as well as the message contents and attachments in one or more of several formats."

Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding what you're asking for.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[robmv]

even if you use only the web fontend of GMail, you could setup an email client like Thunderbird with IMAP, if you only care to backup the emails and not the labels hierarchy, just tell GMail the only label you want to publish on IMAP is "All Mail" and setup you email client to sync that folder

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[mysidia]

I set up everything to forward to my gmail account. Havent had to use the shoddy interface in a long time.

You are fortunate. In the past few years or so 2005-ish, I think, MSN Hotmail removed the original Hotmail ability to forward mail to any address other than a Hotmail or Hotmail Custom Domains address. To prevent users from forwarding to an outside provider, no doubt.

If I recall correctly that is an "anti spam feature" (officially). In any case; people I know that use Hotmail cannot do the same. I wonder how long they will leave legacy forwards in place.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[C_amiga_fan]

I have 3 separate accounts. (1) Hotmail that dates back to my college days (mid-90s) when I accessed my Penn State account from home, and drug the emails into hotmail for review. (2) Yahoo which I use constantly for almost everything. (3) Googlemail which I've tried several times but never really liked (the overlapping folders/letters feel cluttered), but still keep open in case I need it.

Anyway: I don't think there's anything wrong with my ancient Hotmail account. If I had not needed a yahoo account circa 2000, I'd probably still be using the hotmail. I follow the policy "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" as do most people and that's probably why they still have accounts there. (And also because Microsoft recommends it - many people just use he defaults their computer came with... like IE and WMP.)

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[RobNich]

That's interesting, my mail client stores a copy of IMAP mailboxes locally, and my backups contain all of that content. I can scroll back through the archive and restore messages individually or en masse. Some of the benefits of using Apple Mail and having Time Machine set up. Yes, I'm smug. That's another benefit of being a Mac user.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[thetoadwarrior]

My account is pre-Microsoft and I still use it. Mind you I haven't used it for anything other than a spam box in over 10 years. I've logged into my account and it seems fine.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[hedwards]

Like I said a similiar incident did happen with them. I don't recall that making press. Plus, I'd be surprised if the commercial side of Gmail didn't have additional safeguards in place, otherwise it would be a bit silly to use it.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[peragrin]

I would double check your settings then. as I use apple mail as the pop setup for gmail.

also not all imap folders get stored locally only the sections that you have accessed. many times i have seen the screen loading data for a given folder. that mans it isn't stored completely locally.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[jthill]

Just set up POP access and use any client that uses mbox format. It's bog-standard. Thunderbird does it. I'm sure opinions differ on what's best but this certainly works for me. Been using it for almost a decade now, one big archive, no slowdown, a high-traffic mailing list for my searching pleasure.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[iamhassi]

Some of us have been on the Internet since before you were born and have hotmail accounts before google even existed. I have emails I received in the 90s still stored in hotmail.

I don't understand how they can lose data, with a gigabyte costing less than 5 cents (2000 gigabytes is less than $100) why can't they keep backups? My entire gmail account is stored within 35 cents worth of hard drive space.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[Nethead]

Just get a Google Voice number then.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[John Hasler]

> why can't they keep backups?

It is quite possible to lose data despite backups.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[elgaard]

Use IMAP and Thunderbird 3 with "syncrhonize all"

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[root_42]

I use OfflineIMAP to make local copies of my IMAP accounts. I would have pasted the link, but /. does not like pasting on Safari / OS X. So just google for OfflineIMAP. IIRC the tool makes a standard maildir hierarchy of your IMAP account. So you can use it with any sane mail program.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[bvimo]

How?

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[Pharago]

this is not the first time it has happened, hotmail had a rule where if you didn't log in for a month (not sure about the real timespan) they would erase all your mails, they did that to me

i lose years of stuff, hundreds of mails i was keeping there, a shame really, a few months later gmail started giving email accounts for free, and the GiB email free storage race started, i have never come to trust hotmail ever again, they WILL fuck you up if given the chance, why? because those are their servers, their computers not yours, it's not your data, for them the hard drives could be empty for all they care, if you have a problem with that do whatever you want, but start by waving goodbye to your precious bits first

the cloud is a nice feature once you understand you cannot trust your provider and that you should make a backup copy of your data as soon as possible out of the cloud

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[djdavetrouble]

If this same incident happened to Gmail, the story wouldn't just be a tech news article, it would be headline mainstream news.

I think that google takes it all much more seriously that "hotmail". Microsoft just wants to have a player in every game. Google wants
to win the championship ring. Google's revenue comes from serving ads on every gmail viewers page. Microsoft could do without ad revenue
and still be a viable company. Google could not.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[Grishnakh]

Yep, it's all about reputation. If Google had a major outage, there'd be headline news everywhere about it. But when Microsoft has an outage, it's nothing new.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[RobNich]

Trying to make me less smug?!

I just tested to be sure, but as long as the account is set to "Include when automatically checking for new messages" and you haven't unsubscribed the folder, it will get new messages without you clicking on the folder.

When you click the folder, it still runs an update to make sure it's not out-of-date. Also, you can set it to keep copies of all messages and attachments (the default), or just messages, or just read messages, or not to store locally at all.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[cavebison]

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.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[AncientPC]

If you're looking to automate backups of your gmail account on a Linux box, I use mbsync as a cron job to mirror my e-mails it locally.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[dogsbreath]

Backups may be unusable. Any bad thing that can happen will, and at the worst possible moment.

Or perhaps there were finger problems...

Or perhaps, like many large mail systems, restore of a major loss of data is not possible within the constraints imposed (time, machine load, other crap), and the best choice for the business is to write off the data.

Perhaps there are backups but they are not current enough. Say 24/48 hrs earlier, meaning all new stuff is lost. New stuff is the highest priority.

Full nightly backups may be impossible due to cost or time constraints.

RAID systems only go so far to provide protection against data loss. Some types of failure will corrupt the entire volume.

IMHO, someone who relies on an email system file folder as a secure repository for data is a fool or is ignorant of the realities. Anyone who has administrated a large email system (say > 1M users) knows this. Even small systems can be problematic.
Email (SMTP, POP, IMAP etc) is just the wrong app to have confidence in for the purpose of secure, long term storage. Large email systems are a study in contradictory requirements (humongous flow of data in and out requiring high bandwidth coupled with most stored data having very low access rates but huge size). Storage is highly fragmented. Low cost per mailbox is usually a requirement despite the high price on technology to meet the storage performance needs. Couple that with the fact that most large mail systems have numerous abuses (network attacks, spamming, hacking) going on at any point in time.

The surprise is how robust these systems have been made.

Lesson is: if it is important, bring it home and keep it in a safe place. Loss of new mail is and always has been an issue, whether snail mail or internet. It is the nature of the beast. Be ready for it.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[scragz]

it's unbelievable that no OS I've seen has an intelligent backup service

Time Machine on OSX is really impressive.

As far as the OP, mbox and maildir are both plain-text-based and have been around for ages. Thunderbird uses mbox.

Re:Long term hotmail users?

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

But you seen, it's because they have value in mining it that they're likely to keep it safe. You and Google are in the same boat.

Save thy emails by downloading them.

[couchslug]

I use Zimbra, but whatever tool you use, do periodically slurp your webmail and back it up.

Re:Save thy emails by downloading them.

[couchslug]

"I use crowd based storage."

I tried that for my beer. It didn't work out.

Re:Save thy emails by downloading them.

[D Ninja]

I tried to do that too, but he's pretty good-natured and rarely gets angry.

Re:Save thy emails by downloading them.

[Anubis IV]

Sorry, man. Someone told me it was an object lesson for "free, as in beer."

What happened?

[Joce640k]

Maybe they finally tried to switch Hotmail over to Windows NT...

Re:What happened?

[cbhacking]

I get the joke you're trying to make, but it's worth pointing out that this was not only done long ago, it was done using a relatively unknown capability of NT - the POSIX subsystem that allows apps written for Unix-like operating systems to run unmodified (aside from a recompile) on NT. It was actually one of the first major uses of this subsystem, since at the time there was no way to move Hotmail onto Win32 without re-writing it.

Re:What happened?

[drinkypoo]

The POSIX subsystem is well known... to suck, because it only implements POSIX v1 and not POSIX v2 like the whole Unix world has moved on to, nominally including the various free Unixes. That's why the MKS toolkit used to sell like mad, and why Cygwin and Services for Unix exist today.

Re:What happened?

[Joce640k]

OK I admit it was a pretty lame attempt at humor. I figured it might be good for a few karma points here on Slashdot but apparently not... :_(

For the youngsters: The whole point of Microsoft's acquisition of Hotmail was to port it from FreeBSD/Solaris to Windows NT, thus _proving_ to the world that NT was enterprise-ready and capable of running a large website (Hotmail was one of the most heavily loaded websites in the world at the time).

It took them many years to complete and was the butt of many jokes...especially when they kept on announcing it was "finally done" and people would query a Hotmail server only to get a reply from a FreeBSD machine. Eventually they figured out how to block all the querys but there was still plenty of job listings for FreeBSD admins at Hotmail.

Good times.

Re:What happened?

[Bing Tsher E]

Cygwin is a collection of Win32 DLLs. Services for Unix is a complete POSIX subsystem (that plugs in and replaces the crippleware one Microsoft implemented) that communicates directly with the NT Kernel. Pick which one you wish to use wisely.

OMG

[Surakin]

OMG the email chains were all TRUE!!

Re:OMG

[thatnerdguy]

I'm still waiting for Bill Gates to send me to Disney World!

Simple...

[msauve]

you get what you pay for. If email is valuable to you, back it up yourself, or get a service which provides an SLA (uptime, backup, etc). MS's Hotmail specifically says they're not responsible for loss of data. But, people use it because it's free, then want to bitch when there's a problem.

Re:Simple...

[Andy Smith]

"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.

Re:Simple...

[MoonBuggy]

Although I agree that users should have backups in place (and, as I mentioned in another post, any suggestions for a simple bit of cross-platform software that archives into an open format would be helpful), simply saying "It's free, you have no right to bitch" is disingenuous. Yes, in an ideal world one should have a signed contract laying out their precise rights, and yes, any normal free email account has an EULA that basically says "We are not responsible if our service breaks into your house, tars and feathers your spouse, and paints your dog blue", but that does not instantly absolve them from all responsibility in the eyes of their users, wherever they may stand legally. To a reasonable person, there is an expectation of reliability even in a free email service - even if a class action suit wouldn't have a leg to stand on, there's still the (often equally powerful) court of public opinion to deal with.

Re:Simple...

[Nemyst]

Furthermore, they're running the service for a reason. If there was no incentive for them to run Hotmail, they'd have axed it a long time ago. Thus, legal obligations aside, if they want their product to help them, they need to offer a good service. If they don't, people will just move to another similar service and they'll have lost their customer base. Worse, it'll probably taint all of their other offerings. What if they have the same policies/stupidity with, say, Office Live?

Re:Simple...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It isn't free anyway, it's ad supported. Everybody who lost data paid for the service.

Re:Simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

you get what you pay for.

$400,000,000, last time it was sold.

Saying Hotmail is free is disingenuous or plain stupid; it's big business. Shifting the commerce method to something slightly more complicated than kindergarten economics is no excuse to parrot such a pathetic knee-jerk response on Slashdot. That's as thoughtless as the plague of "correlation is not causation", "first post!", & "imagine a Beowulf of these."

But, people use it because it's free, then want to bitch when there's a problem.

Yup, and Hotmail trades on reputation. They specifically say they're not responsible for loss of data only to /limit/ liability for failure, but they cannot remove the damage it does to that reputation. Damage it enough and Hotmail will truly become 'free', because it'll be worthless, not paying big salaries and dividends.

People bitching is absolutely crucial feedback to the economic loop. It informs the greater tribe or users, informs the advertising clients, and informs the management, that there are bottom-line affecting problems that need to be addressed right now. People have the legal, moral, and _rational_ right to bitch when Hotmail fucks up data-preservation. They're only limited from suing.

That you and I know better methods of email does not enter into it. Saying "you get what you pay for" here is the most juvenile form of "I told you so" -- it's expressed only to emphasize your "I", grotesquely distorting facts to form a small "notice me!" soapbox for ego. Compared to complaining about this Hotmail fuck-up, you've actually demonstrated stupid bitching rather than identified it. It's really not a proud moment.

Re:Simple...

[antdude]

How do users backup their Hotmail's e-mails?

Users can still log in sans issue

[Threni]

But can they log in sans serif?

Re:Users can still log in sans issue

[Anonymous Coward]

no, only avec serif.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[Totenglocke]

Besides, isn't it called something terrible these days like "Windows Live Hotmail"?

Well apparently with this new "upgrade" they're changing the name to Windows Dead Hotmail.

The jury's still out on the cloud, but . . .

[indytx]

Who's going to trust Microsoft to have a part of it? Am I the only person, after the whole Danger debacle and now this, who would never consider trusting Microsoft with any important data? This kind of thing looks really, really bad.

Re:The jury's still out on the cloud, but . . .

[Blakey Rat]

Well, to be fair, you *do* get your news from Slashdot. Obviously they're going to post data loss that happens to Microsoft, and maybe a 50/50 chance of posting data loss from other companies.

You also have to take into account scale... if Microsoft has the most data stored in the cloud, then statistically they'd also have the most data loss-- even if their data protection is just as good as other cloud vendors! Microsoft having more data loss incidents doesn't necessarily make them worse than any other cloud vendor.

In short, think critically about the news.

Re:The jury's still out on the cloud, but . . .

[marcosdumay]

Well, they've already had play for sure, and no credibility loss because of it. People stil buy their cloud services.

That said, why would you trust any cloud service with important data? I have no reason to point you.

"sans issue"

[ebcdic]

Does the author have any idea what that term really means?

Re:"sans issue"

[msauve]

Of course. sans = Storage Area NetworkS, which is obviously where the author thinks the problem lies.

Re:"sans issue"

[plover]

Obviously it was a security breach, which is why they called the SANS institute to help figure it out.

Re:"sans issue"

[MickyTheIdiot]

sounds like inSANSity to me.

Re:"sans issue"

[JustOK]

I saw an article on that, some sort of sans paper. It was pretty rough.

Re:"sans issue"

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the author meant that there was a "Stuff Appears Nowhere in Sight" issue.

Re:"sans issue"

[rubycodez]

did it use sans serif?

What do you expect?

[Dr_Barnowl]

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.

Re:What do you expect?

[John Hasler]

> You gets what you pays for.

No you don't. proof: people buy Microsoft products.

Re:What do you expect?

[airfoobar]

People's privacy only has low value because people forget to cherish it: it's become available in infinite supply, so its value is approaching zero.

Re:What do you expect?

[waterdamagerepair]

Thanks for your support

Re:What do you expect?

[nurb432]

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.

And most likely a violation of your internet providers TOS for running those evil 'servers' on a home account.

Re:What do you expect?

[John Hasler]

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.

Good idea, but how are you going to implement it in such a way that the consumers don't actually need to do anything?

Re:What do you expect?

[El Cubano]

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.

That is exactly what Eben Moglen discussed during his presentation at DebConf10. Info on the presentation (including links to video) is available. Also check out Joey Hess' commentary on the presentation. His objective price point is less than one hundred dollars, IIRC.

Re:What do you expect?

[Blakey Rat]

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.

You mean like Windows Home Server? I think Microsoft's a little ahead of you on that one.

Re:What do you expect?

[MattBD]

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.

Ever heard of a PogoPlug? It's a tiny server running an embedded Linux distro of some kind, and it's a kind of self-hosted version of Dropbox. You connect it to your router, attach 1-4 flash drives or external hard drives, and you can share their contents over the Internet.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[BinBoy]

Besides, isn't it called something terrible these days like "Windows Live Hotmail"? Once more showing That things connected to "Windows" is a data loss risk.

Windows Active Live Visual Hotmail .Net 7 Personal Edition

To The Cloud!

[baptiste]

This makes their new marketing slogan for Windows Live all the more humorous! 'To The Cloud' indeed! More like POOF!

Re:To The Cloud!

[waterdamagerepair]

I use ABC Amber Outlook Converter. I can save all Outlook emails, or specific folders, to various file formats including HTML

Re:To The Cloud!

[Nemyst]

Shit. It's raining.

Re:To The Cloud!

[Locutus]

but when you combine this _feature_ of their cloud with the marketing of their Windows Phone 7, it makes life easier when you don't have all that clutter of past emails around. Get in, see nothing, get out and get on with your life. doh!

LoB

Re:To The Cloud!

[Squonk01]

Microsoft is rebranding the service "Notmail." http://www.flickr.com/photos/alvesfamily/5316203300/

Re:To The Cloud!

[symbolset]

It's an innovative deduplication algorithm from Microsoft Labs soon to be patented: Zero Instance Storage.

Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute. I'm a manager, and I've been reading a lot of case studies and watching a lot of webcasts about The Cloud. Based on all of this glorious marketing literature, I, as a manager, have absolutely no reason to doubt the safety of any data put in The Cloud.

The case studies all use words like "secure", "MD5", "RSS feeds" and "encryption" to describe the security of The Cloud. I don't know about you, but that sounds damn secure to me! Some Clouds even use SSL and HTTP. That's rock solid in my book.

And don't forget that you have to use Web Services to access The Cloud. Nothing is more secure than SOA and Web Services, with the exception of perhaps SaaS. But I think that Cloud Services 2.0 will combine the tiers into an MVC-compliant stack that uses SaaS to increase the security and partitioning of the data.

My main concern isn't with the security of The Cloud, but rather with getting my Indian team to learn all about it so we can deploy some first-generation The Cloud applications and Web Services to provide the ultimate platform upon which we can layer our business intelligence and reporting, because there are still a few verticals that we need to leverage before we can move to The Cloud 2.0.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[nsheppar]

Wait a minute, I'm a manager, and

Out of curiosity, does anybody know where this meme (assuming it is actually a meme and not just a single comment people keep reposting) came from? I did a little googling but wasn't able to find much other than a lot of uses of it in slashdot posts.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[Dogtanian]

Out of curiosity, does anybody know where this meme (assuming it is actually a meme and not just a single comment people keep reposting) came from?

Yeah, I do- it came from stupid managers. ;-)

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[Opportunist]

Hello, I'm working for $bigcorp and I would like to sell you The Cloud. You will see our rates are affordable and we boost your productivity by a magnitude you cannot even imagine yet! Best of all, it will seamlessly integrate with your Indian team (after all, one of the big features of The Cloud is that it's, well, distributed. Distributed like your production, you see, it already fits perfectly!). At the final integration step, you will even no longer have to rely on your team in India should they become too expensive, moving your production elsewhere is easy with The Cloud, after all, you know how everyone always says with the internet it doesn't matter where you are? The Cloud turns this catchphrase into reality.

Mind if I invite you to dinner? We have much to discuss!

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[Opportunist]

It's the opener to "I'm (pretending to be) a person with no idea about technology, but dammit, Google and Facebook got rich quick with that internet thingamajig and I wanna too!"

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[t2000kw]

Cloud 2? My company is working on Cloud 3 Premium Services. We're skipping version 2 altogether to give users the feeling that it's a well-developed platform. We plan to roll it out before it's fully ready and let users be our beta testers, much like a large software company in Washington does. Of course, your data will be safe with our Cloud 3 Premium Services, and we won't share your data with other parties, except those with whom we have a business partnership with.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[Mathinker]

it will seamlessly integrate with your Indian team (after all, one of the big features of The Cloud

Of course! Indians have been using beta version (smoke) clouds for communication since prehistoric times!

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[chooks]

Coming soon: Cloud Forever. It will be available on your Phantom gaming system Some Day Soon.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[PPNSteve]

It seems you didn't miss any of the current buzz words in that. Good job.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[mysidia]

Parent doesn't win any awards for originality... lather, rinse, repeat

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[tomhudson]

The case studies all use words like "secure", "MD5"

For those who STILL don't get that this is a joke (see other comments), MD5 has been cracked.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[TaoPhoenix]

A lot of it stems from Dilbert and the Pointy Headed Boss.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[nickrw]

(assuming it is actually a meme and not just a single comment people keep reposting)

What is a meme if it is not just a single comment people keep re-posting?

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[Richy_T]

And shockingly, the pass-phrase was "12345"

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[fermion]

Not a cloud issue. A freebie issue. It is expected that free services will lack funds for redundancy and customer service. I have been storing data on "the cloud: for 10 years, and it has proven a very useful tool.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[theArtificial]

While not an exact fit look down to "Just a few minor changes" web design hell.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[MichaelSmith]

The funny thing is that when you look behind the curtains it turns out they are actually buying some old piece of shit like clear case.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[tomhudson]

Darn you! Now I'm going to have to change my pa ...Invalid user name or password. Please try again..

-- Barbie

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[sjames]

IT'S SO FLUFFY!!!

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[Jaxoreth]

Cloud 2? My company is working on Cloud 3 Premium Services. We're skipping version 2 altogether...

Oh yeah? My company is six versions ahead of yours. We're on Cloud 9. Dude... it's awesome.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[Opportunist]

And that silver lining is truely silver! And with the right investment NOW, it can be gold!

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[John Betonschaar]

Wait a minute. I'm a manager...

No you're not, you're only pretending to be one. You exposed yourself by not mentioning any of the synergistic advantages you get from SaaS in The Cloud.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[Coren22]

Every time I see -Barbie at the end of a post by tomhudson, it makes me wonder if this person's password was 12345.

Re:Data loss is just not an issue with The Cloud!

[tomhudson]

Every time I see -Barbie at the end of a post by tomhudson, it makes me wonder if this person's password was 12345.

don't be silly, it's 54321!

Oh, wait ..

-- Barbara

Do you have any idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Do you have any idea?

[DoofusOfDeath]

That describes the situation perfectly.

I think you're ignoring an idiomatic detail about the word 'sans'.

In all the usages I can think of, 'sans' refers to something that's a proper subset of something else. For example, "My cable television contract has all the channels sans HBO."

In the original post, it's not clear of what set "issue" is a member. That's jarring to the reader.

Therefore I think the way it was used was at least unpleasant and possibly also unidiomatic. I'd say that made it a bad word choice.

Re:Do you have any idea?

[Palshife]

No, he's sans humor.

Re:Do you have any idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

"sans issue" means "no exit" in French. So it is briefly confusing to anyone who understands a bit of French to use it to mean "without any problems". The trouble is that you don't know how much French the writer is trying to use, and might even think they are trying to say "Users can log in but not log out again". (And the use of issue to mean problem, though widely accepted, is still non-compliant with most dictionaries; it more properly means an outcome or consequence, or a matter for discussion - without the negative connotations)

Re:Do you have any idea?

[Godskitchen]

What value is gained by using "sans" in place of "without" when writing an article for a predominantly English-speaking audience (aside from making him feel très chic and intelligents ;))?

Another pet peeve of mine is the use of "apropos" as a synonym for "appropriate" (http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/apropos.html) or "whom" as just a formal version of "who" - the English language is dead my friends! =)

Re:Do you have any idea?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Read some Shakespeare sometime. That'll help you think up some more usages.

Fair point (I assume), but what was idiomatic in the 17th(?) century isn't necessarily idiomatic in the 21st.

Re:Do you have any idea?

[Lord Crc]

In all the usages I can think of, 'sans' refers to something that's a proper subset of something else.

Did you forget about sans serif?

Re:Do you have any idea?

[Rob the Bold]

That describes the situation perfectly.

I think you're ignoring an idiomatic detail about the word 'sans'.

In all the usages I can think of, 'sans' refers to something that's a proper subset of something else. For example, "My cable television contract has all the channels sans HBO."

In the original post, it's not clear of what set "issue" is a member. That's jarring to the reader.

Therefore I think the way it was used was at least unpleasant and possibly also unidiomatic. I'd say that made it a bad word choice.

I'd say your explanation is sans basis in fact. The term sans means "without," not "except for." This is true in both the original French and in English. While these are similar, they are not identical.

Re:Do you have any idea?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Ooh, good point. I concede.

Re:Do you have any idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The transliteration of 'sans' is 'without', the actual translation is closer to 'withhold' or 'withheld'.

It's usually used with concrete objects, and usually used to indicate something which is normally present but is being excluded. For example "I'll take a hamburger, sans pickle".
You should really read it as something along the lines of "Users can still log in, and the issues are left out" or "Users can still log in, and not have the issues included". Which is still technically correct but the usage is clunky and it just doesn't flow well.
Most of the time when you see people use it as he did, they really don't know what the hell 'sans' really means and are just trying to sound 'smart'.

Re:Do you have any idea?

[Rhaban]

"sans" is the french word for "without", but the french word "issue" doesn't have the same meaning than the english word, as it actually means "exit".

"sans issue" means "dead end".

No need for local backup

[allfreightoncanals]

You can easily backup your emails by setting up an account with another webmail provider and set that to download and save email from your original account. Of course that means you are giving two companies access to your information, but since you used web mail to begin with, I'm assuming that you are ok with that.

Re:No need for local backup

[Chaonici]

I once tried to set my Hotmail account to forward mail to my Gmail account. This was a couple of years ago, and I remember that Hotmail would only let me forward my mail to another Hotmail account. -_-

filtered

[Anonymous Coward]

deleted every email in the inbox?

finally hotmail's spam filtering works!

Re:Hotmail has a 30 day inactivity policy

[Paradise Pete]

This is old news. If you don't log into your Hotmail account for 30 days, they wipe out all your emails.

Not according to the article. It says 120 days + a 90 day grace period.

And that boys and girls

[assertation]

And that boys and girls is why cloud computing sucks.

Re:And that boys and girls

[Ash-Fox]

And that boys and girls is why cloud computing sucks.

Hotmail doesn't use cloud computing though.

Re:And that boys and girls

[assertation]

Same idea, you data is on someone else's machine is under their control and subject to their goofs.

Re:And that boys and girls

[cdrnet]

Yeah, nobody ever lost data on their own machines

Re:And that boys and girls

[assertation]

I think most people would agree that most people would have a different attitude about that in the same way they would feel differently about getting a bruise on their eye from walking into a door versus having someone accidentally elbow them in the eye.

Re:And that boys and girls

[cdrnet]

Yes, indeed. Yet you're not always responsible for loosing data on your own machine either (e.g. accidentally deleting vs. theft or fire)

Re:And that boys and girls

[Rantastic]

Hotmail doesn't use cloud computing though.

Is that supposed to be a joke?

Really deleted or just not visible

[antifoidulus]

Just because the mails aren't visible doesn't NECESSARILY mean they are deleted. It could just be a replication issue amongst certain servers(you see this happen on slashdot from time to time, ie a story looks like it doesn't have any comments because there was an issue updating the server you are currently using). Eventual consistency is a powerful tool, but things like this can easily happen if a problem occurs.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[Angeret]

Nah, think I'll pass on that one and wait for the SE version.

Actually

[justthinkit]

Actually it has been Hotmail policy to wipe your account if you don't use it for a while. I think it was 30 days. Can't remember as I haven't used Hotmail in 5 or 6 years. I do remember setting a reminder to check my Hotmail account monthly or else I would lose all the spam I hadn't read yet.

Re:Actually

[vlueboy]

I forget my monthly check once in a while, so I can confirm this.
Yahoo Mail has a 4-month wipe countdown, but you need to pay for POP3 access if you want to slurp the mail.

Yahoo email.

[the_raptor]

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:Yahoo email.

[ian_from_brisbane]

Secret questions are the worst "security" feature ever.

They are a great feature if you always make your answer nonsensical with respect to the question.
eg. Question: What was the name of your first pet? Answer: July 23, 1994

Re:Yahoo email.

[couchslug]

"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."

User error. End of story. I use questions whose answers have meaning to me but not to others.

Re:Yahoo email.

[the_raptor]

10+ years ago you didn't get to write your own secret questions and at best got a list of stupid obvious shit. The one Yahoo gives me is "what is your favourite sport?" but I don't have one as I am not at all a sports person. And I am not the same person I was 10+ years ago so I apparently can't replicate the thinking which generated the original answer to that question.

Using better secret questions is something I have learned to do but as I don't have a time travel machine I can't fix past mistakes.

Re:Yahoo email.

[the_raptor]

I love idiots like you that can't parse a post. I never blamed Yahoo for my inability to remember what I was thinking 10+ years ago, but I do blame them for offering no user support in the likely event of this situation occurring. Especially as they locked me out in the first place which made me need to use the secret question system to "recover" my password ("recover" is wrong as I hadn't lost it, they had reset it).

Also why the hell would I think to write down the answers to secret questions when the entire point of them is supposed to be to allow you to recover your password in the event it is forgotten (they are also used to recover hacked accounts, but it is likely the account was hacked via the secret question in the first place)? All my passwords are backed up and nearly every other account I have allows easy recovery by emailing a reset option to the account email. But that doesn't work when you lose access to the email.

I have had the secret question/answer dilemma with a number of other services (including Government ones) but at least those allowed you to contact support and prove your identity to get the account unlocked.

Re:Yahoo email.

[petermgreen]

Some sites don't let you choose the questions :(

How many nines, again?

[Alex Belits]

How many "nines" did Microsoft promise with their supposed reliability?

Re:How many nines, again?

[Alex Belits]

Wasn't it supposed to act as a demo of Microsoft no longer being the crappiest platform around?

Re:How many nines, again?

[Thundersnatch]

How many "nines" did Microsoft promise with their supposed reliability?

Zero for non-paid accounts. There is no SLA for free accounts, same as with gmail.

Anyway, this was not a technology failure, but the result of a Hotmail's inactivity policy. Which is clearly described on their site.

Backup solution (not cross platform)

[Lonewolf666]

For Firefox and SeaMonkey, there is MozBackup to backup your local profiles, including the mailbox. While available only for Windows, it is Open Source and should therefore not easily disappear.

Of course, relying on MozBackup requires you to generally store your mails at home, not on the server.

Re:Backup solution (not cross platform)

[hedwards]

Personally, I like Mailstore Home when I'm using Windows. It's convenient, backs up only unique emails and allows for convenient archive. With the ability to search for and restore individual emails as well.

How interesting

[Mathinker]

> Try to create a new account. It will ask for a phone number.

You didn't, perchance, just try to leave that blank?

Last time I checked, it was possible.

Re:How interesting

[Ash-Fox]

You didn't, perchance, just try to leave that blank?

I did with someone who was going to get an e-mail address for the first time. They were unable to send e-mails until that was filled out.

Re:How interesting

[Demonoid-Penguin]

You didn't, perchance, just try to leave that blank?

I did with someone who was going to get an e-mail address for the first time. They were unable to send e-mails until that was filled out.

They must of fixed it - how lucky for you.

• enter username (1.US.r@gmail
• enter password, twice (1USrgmailcom)
• make question (what's my password)
• enter answer (duh)
• enter fake email address(m.mouse@wonderland.mil)
• select country(Albania)
• agree to terms(yes)
• enter captcha(whatever)
• Click button
• Click "show me my account"
• Click "sign out"

Another disposable account - less than 2 minutes - no sigh of demand for a 'phone number.

Bad google, bad.

Re:How interesting

[Demonoid-Penguin]

And no problems sending email to fake address from it - no hint of a "what is your phone number". I'm starting to think you're either.... well, either way...

Re:How interesting

[damaged_sectors]

in Canada, online impersonation of Mr m.mouse@wonderland.mil from Albania would be a serious crime and you face jail if you ever cross the border, Mr Mouse.

In real life, Canada and elsewhere - *you* are a troll.

That's someone who's failings are so apparent that they are socially marginalized. Your twisted, bitter, damaged mind takes pleasure in the the misfortune of others - when not practicing cruelty to animals you delight in creating fear from fantasy - just like now.

Go back under your bridge - there's a cleaning flood a coming.

Re:How interesting

[Ash-Fox]

enter fake email address(m.mouse@wonderland.mil)

I never entered any sort of e-mail address, fake or otherwise.

MS's "cloud" image, it's crunch time

[v1]

We keep hearing about how MS wants to move to cloud-based services, with things like office. If they're not taking this extremely seriously and providing five star response, it shoots their cloud image in the foot.

But then, they seem to like shooting themselves in the foot. (you'd think by now they'd have ran out of toes?) I certainly wouldn't trust them to keep my documents safe if they demonstrate they can't even handle my email.

New Microsoft Live Hotmail

[Spy der Mann]

Get it while it's hot!

Re:Hotmail has a 30 day inactivity policy

[IrquiM]

So what you are saying is that the email account I haven't used for more than 5 years have at last been wiped?

Not Microsoft's first fuck-up with Hotmail

[blind biker]

When MS acquired Hotmail, they tried to move from BSD to Windows/IIS, and failed (back then, anyway) miserably. Then they poured shitloads of commercials and bling into the UI of Hotmail. Finally, they intorduced a rather draconian policy, whereby if you didn't access your account in 30 days, you were locked out. Since I hated the commercials and the bling, I had a hiatus in Hotmail use, and got locked out. I also could NOT re-create the same account name, even if nobody was using it. Anyhow, I was locked out until that day when an exploit ("hack") was discovered, with which anyone could access anyone else's account, without supplying a password. Does anyone remember those happy days? So, I "hacked" into my own account. And yes, the account was there, with all the e-mails. Why the lock-out policy? I dunno, one of the many brainfarts generating from MS.

I remember opening my colleague's account and calling him over, just to show him it was possible. That was the last day he ever used Hotmail.

Re:Not Microsoft's first fuck-up with Hotmail

[blarkon]

The migration to IIS was completed a decade ago. They hit bumps like any migration, but they got it done. All free mail services delete your account if you don't access within a couple of monthis (including gmail). The interesting question is - if accounts from hotmail are deleted due to inactivity, why does hotmail still have double the number of users of gmail (and yahoo mail 3 times as many users as gmail) http://gorumors.com/crunchies/number-of-users-on-hotmail-vs-gmail-vs-yahoo-mail/

Re:Not Microsoft's first fuck-up with Hotmail

[blind biker]

All free mail services delete your account if you don't access within a couple of monthis (including gmail).

First of all, as I wrote (gee, can't you actually just, you know, read?) I was locked out. I managed to "hack" into my account, and all my e-mails were there. My account was not deleted! So much so, in fact, that I was not able to create the same account name, ever, as I'd always get the message that "the account already exists".

As for Gmail: I don't know for sure, but I guess they do not have a locl-out policy like Mickeysoft. This is based on empirical evidence: I have a throw-away Gmail account, which at one time I didn't access for 5 months. After that period, however, I was still able to log in and read and send e-mails.

Re:Not Microsoft's first fuck-up with Hotmail

[Anonymous Coward]

It was over eleven years ago yet it still remains Slashdot's fourth most-visited story of all time.

Read all about it at http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/30/1324206.shtml

Re:Not Microsoft's first fuck-up with Hotmail

[devent]

Because gmail is pretty new to the market? Hotmail was released in July 4, 1996; 14 years ago. Yahoo mail was released October 8, 1997, 13 years ago. Gmail was released March 21, 2004, just 6 (now 7) years ego. From this standpoint hotmail is not better or worse then Gmail because it was available the double time Gmail was available and they have only double the users. You can argue if Gmail were available in 1996 it would have the same amount of users as hotmail.

Re:Not Microsoft's first fuck-up with Hotmail

[Rakishi]

The interesting question is - if accounts from hotmail are deleted due to inactivity, why does hotmail still have double the number of users of gmail (and yahoo mail 3 times as many users as gmail) http://gorumors.com/crunchies/number-of-users-on-hotmail-vs-gmail-vs-yahoo-mail/

1. Because those are most certainly unique visitors per month so deleting old users does jack shit for the numbers.
2. As someone else pointed out gmail is very much a new player and people don't like switching email addresses as a rule.
3. Most anyone who isn't an old fart, see 2, is using gmail.
4. Gmail is gaining users very quickly, see 3, while everyone else is at best staying constant.
5. The people in those other companies know this and have great fun laughing, and cringing, whenever their CEOs mention how "fantastic" their webmail is doing.

It's a quiet revolution..

[nanospook]

More and more as I use Facebook to communicate with my friends and associates.. I realize that email is becoming less important to me. Instead of someone coming out with a new system designed to "fix" the email system flaws, Facebook seems to be quietly supplanting it with a richer media based experience. Down the road I expect that I'll be able to have multiple layers on FB, for friends, associates, business.. so I can show what I want to those within a group..

Are they finally switching?

[MS]

Hotmail startet on Solaris/*BSD-servers and was a charm to use... In January 1998 Microsoft bought Hotmail and tried to port everything to WindowsNT... In mid-2000 they finally started switching "some" of the frontend-servers from FreeBSD/Apache to Windows2000/IIS... Maybe now they are finally starting to port the database-servers also to Windows-HastaLaVista-New-Experience-Technology, so that's why data gets lost. :-)

It’s not a bug it’s a feature!

[redbeard55]

It’s not a bug it’s a feature!

It’s a New Year and Microsoft has graciously given you a fresh clean start with your, I mean their email. No need to worry about the past . . . Embrace the new . . .

Yeah gotta love the cloud MS has been tokin up lately, I mean talking up lately.

OMG, think of the spam!

[whoop]

What will come of all the spam lost in this tragedy? It confounds me how email systems like Hotmail and Yahoo keep users with all the spam that comes through. Last year, I found the name/pass of a Hotmail account I made five or more years ago. I logged in to around 3k messages in the inbox. Amazing.

Re:Hotmail has a 30 day inactivity policy

[frdmfghtr]

This is old news. If you don't log into your Hotmail account for 30 days, they wipe out all your emails.

Not according to the article. It says 120 days + a 90 day grace period.

Yes, this was changed year ago, and I believe the timeout for deactivating account is more than another year of inactivity. Unfortunately for Hotmail it's reputation has to live with these old limitations. Lately it seems Hotmail has been on a turbo charged dev cycle, after years of lagging hopelessly it has reached or surpassed feature parity with Gmail in just half a year or something. Maybe it's taken over by the same team that is running IE9.

I just checked mine (can't believe I actually remembered the password) after over three years of non use and it's still active, with 1000+ messages in the inbox going back to 2007. I suppose after the time limits expire you are on borrowed time, but it seems like this enforcement is not universal.

I had this happen to me as well

[cyberzephyr]

As you all know, if you don't use your account you will lose it.

I lost mine about 4 years ago and went back recently to Hotmail and they let me in just fine, same password and everything.

At the very least, it's better than Google keeping all your stuff forever.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[halowolf]

To the cloud! ...oh wait a sec.

2004, 2008, 2009, 2011...

[flyingfsck]

A quick google of Hotmail data loss tales of woe shows that it is almost a yearly feature now.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[ozmanjusri]

Wait for the ME version.

That's the classic Microsoft experience...

Re:To The Rain Cloud!

[arthurpaliden]

rain cloud all the data fell out.

Re:In related news,

[bjourne]

Hotmail has improved a lot in the recent years. It is still not nearly as good as gmail, but there are certainly much worse email providers out there.

Go ThunderStorm!

[TaoPhoenix]

Why settle for a wimpy ol' cloud when you can have a ThunderStorm? Post-Web direct p2p data redundancy with patent pending SpiralTrack technology so you can get up to the nanosecond data auditing at the bit level.

After all, those Web links aren't safe anymore - they don't come from Trusted Sources these days. Better to use LightningStrike secured data transmission protocols!

Re:That's what I was going to say

[KDR_11k]

Says you, QWERTY supremacist!

Science Answer: Clouds Evaporate!

[BoRegardless]

Once it gets too hot...no more clouds.

Works every time.

Trusting clouds is well...trusting in vaporware.

Re:In related news,

[xtracto]

It is really funny. Not so long ago there was a IAmA (interview) in Reddit with some of the Hotmail engineers.

One of the main things people didn't like is that Hotmail deletes all your data if you do not login in some time (3 months IIRC). Well, after being confronted with that, the engineers answered "well, we incresaed the time from X to 3 months" or something like that...

That was exactly the reason I left hotmail (when Gmail became available). I had *everything* from the first days of the net there (I created my HM account in August, 1997) but the bastards deleted it all.

Hotmail sucks so bad

Re:That's what I was going to say

[Nieriko]

Sounds like Windows Notmail.

nice name, someone please tip marketing!

Re:I still use Hotmail

[DJLuc1d]

It's good policy, I'll give you that. But what does it have to do with a database loss, or how exactly would that help in this situation ?

They used to do this on purpose

[canadiangoose]

I've had a hotmail account since '94, well before Microsoft purchased them. I used it for everything. It had all sort of amazing stuff in it, letters between myself and some of my first girlfriends, things I really rather treasured. I was quite a fan of Hotmail. Even when Gmail was released, I didn't think I had much use for it. Hotmail did everything I needed.

Until one day in '04, when I logged in after having taken a bit of a break from the online world. It was the first time I'd logged in to my Hotmail in a month, so I expected there to be quite a lot of mail. There were plenty of new messages, but all of my old email was gone!!!!

I freaked out for a while, then read through the "terms of service" or whatever they were calling it at the time. Seems they had silently implemented a policy whereby they delete ALL of your email if you fail to log in for 30 days. Ten years worth of email GONE!!

I suppose they were trying to provide incentives for people to log in to their Hotmail more regularly, but it all it motivated me to do was to open a Gmail account immediately.

Sure, it was a free service with no guarantees. Perhaps I should have been making backups of my precious emails. Thing is, this was not something they did by mistake. This was a policy that they willfully implemented. They chose to punish their subscribers. I don't get it.

Microsoft sucks.

Re:They used to do this on purpose

[Blakey Rat]

Sure, it was a free service with no guarantees. Perhaps I should have been making backups of my precious emails.

"Perhaps?" So you've learned absolutely nothing from this? Great.

Thing is, this was not something they did by mistake. This was a policy that they willfully implemented. They chose to punish their subscribers. I don't get it.

Or maybe they chose to clean out the disk space used by users who never used it, and give it to users who actually did use it. Of course when you put it that way, it doesn't sound so eviiiil.

Microsoft sucks.

Yeah, and that's the message you get out of this? You suck.

Re:They used to do this on purpose

[Beerdood]

Your last couple of paragraphs are a little bit contradictory - you're aware that it was a free service, and that you should have been backing up your precious emails - so don't flame Microsoft for deleting your account information! 30 days probably seemed like a reasonable time frame to disable an account - there are plenty of inactive and spammy accounts that need to get purged every once in a while. Maybe if it was 60 or 90 days you'd still be using the account.

I doubt the incentive was to just use hotmail more regularly, but to get a few paying subscribers. You always had the option to "update to hotmail plus" for I dunno, 30 bucks a year or something like that. I'm not sure if your account is still deleted if inactive for 30 days, but back then the paid upgrade would guarantee your info wasn't deleted (plus give some other seemingly worthless benefits). I lost my emails like that too once back in 2002, and I was a little irritated at the time but I didn't switch to another email address out of spite - I was using a free service!

Re:They used to do this on purpose

[thopkins]

Wasn't Hotmail founded in 1996? (not 1994)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotmail

Re:They used to do this on purpose

[marcosdumay]

You say that:

"They chose to punish their subscribers. I don't get it. "

And then, goes on with:

"Microsoft sucks."

You just get it.

Y2K+11 and Cloud

[eadon-com]

It's a new year - this could be a date-related bug. Or it might be MS incompetence by a manager, as per Roz Ho and the Danger "cloud" data loss. Who knows? One lesson to derive is that Hotmail is essentially a "Cloud" service provided by Microsoft and Microsoft has hosed people's "Cloud" data. Would you trust MS to keep your data safe? Governments are, apparently. Governments are trusting YOUR data to the MS "Cloud". How long will it be before the headline "Government apologises for "losing" your data"? Happy Y2K+11 - Eadon

Re:That's what I was going to say

[CSMoran]

How about from W, through S, to H.

Re:I still use Hotmail

[JWSmythe]

You haven't seen my hotmail account. I haven't used it for any practical purpose in years. If I only allowed folks in my whitelist, the account would be empty. As it is, it's always full of spam for porn and online pharmacies.

    Of course, the only legitimate purpose is for when people claim they can't send to or receive from Hotmail.

It's worse.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, will you look at that, my account is empty too. It's also reverted my privacy settings back to default (Limited) instead of Private.

gmail has lost accounts too

[teknopurge]

I think this has happened to every freemail provider at some point. Google has a long track-record of borking gmail accounts and worse: logging into other people's in-boxes.

What?

[zmollusc]

Why didn't Hotmail back everything up to the cloud?

Re:That's what I was going to say

[Olden Inyoue]

And today it's "news" even though it's the same thing that happened to me when I was forcibly migrated/downgraded into Deadmail back when they were first rolling it out years ago.

And when I cancelled my account they asked me if I was sure I wanted to do that because it meant I would also lose my M$ Passport and a couple other meaningless so-called benefits. I was not dissuaded.

Well, one thing mail has to do is keeping the mail

[Ilgaz]

Hotmail has improved a lot in the recent years. It is still not nearly as good as gmail, but there are certainly much worse email providers out there.

You notice the story talks about entire mailbox being wiped right?
I don't use gmail too, I choose to pay for the mail service so someone will feel responsible for backups, reliability instead of data mining my personal messages.

What if this is a conspiracy?

[Ilgaz]

To the cloud! ...oh wait a sec.

As MS got absolutely nothing to offer on Cloud (once you filter PR mess), perhaps they try to make people lose trust to cloud services? ;)

Re:What if this is a conspiracy?

[mjwx]

As MS got absolutely nothing to offer on Cloud (once you filter PR mess)

Microsoft BPOS, hosted Exchange and Crap^WSharePoint.

MS does not have any direct online services marketed to businesses but they have a fair few products that are designed to be hosted by someone else, no matter how crappy those products might be. That's the MS "cloud" strategy, get someone else to do it, you may recognise this as it seems to be identical MS's Support strategy.

On the consumer side they have Xbox Live, Games for Windows Live, Live Messenger and Hotmail (no, I will not call it Live Hotmail). As we've seen MS does a fantastic job of failing with these services.

Re:What if this is a conspiracy?

[IainCartwright]

What about Azure?

Re:How to back up my Cloud mail?

[tkprit]

I just use the client email program windows live mail (preloaded on my win machines). It saves emails in subdirs "contacts" and "Windows Live Mail" at \users\[user]\appdata\microsoft, all in .eml format, and in the proper account subdirectories (gmail/msn/[isp]).

Re:In related news,

[MichaelSmith]

Dunno. Sounds like the ideal place for a throwaway account. A lot of the time on the internet the problem is companies not deleting your data.

Re:I still use Hotmail

[ocdscouter]

As it is, it's always full of spam for porn and online pharmacies.

You know, I'm still waiting for someone to combine the two.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[eclectro]

Once more showing That things connected to "Windows" is a data loss risk.

I'm glad to report that I still have all of my 22,000 spams.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[ocdscouter]

How about from W, through S, to H.

Gee, that's some pretty sharp curvature, isn't it?

Re:That's what I was going to say

[ocdscouter]

I don't buy Microsoft products until they're Professional. Then you know it's good!

Good thing...

[Foolhardly]

I have all my emails backed up in a 4GB .pst!

If you want something done properly...

[Curl E]

... do it yourself.

A vanity domain name, a VPS hosting an ubuntu instance running postfix, dovecot, spamassassin, roundcube, denyhosts and duplicity backup to some rsync.net space.

Yes it costs money, but I control the whitelists, the filtering, the retention and the backups. It's a small price to pay. I wouldn't expect my grandmother to set up something similar, but I can host extra mailboxes if need be. It's not that hard to do if you've been running linux for a couple of years. Set it up and forward a copy of your email from your current provider for a few months until you feel comfortable with your set up.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[MichaelSmith]

Maybe he uses AZERTY.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[MichaelSmith]

How about from W, through S, to H.

Gee, that's some pretty sharp curvature, isn't it?

Sounds like an overuse injury.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[hairyfeet]

It is called "Windows Live Mail" now, and I expect to be getting a call from my dad any minute wanting to know "how I can make his letters come back". At least in my experience Hotmail/WLmail is popular with the old folks who've had an account since it was just Hotmail,Gmail is popular with geeks and those that live on chat apps, and Yahoo Mail is big with everybody else.

As for your "Windows equals data loss" crack, I'm typing this on a 2004 XP box that has never lost so much as a single file. When you realize that many of those on Windows frankly don't know the first thing about PCs, we're talking asking where the any key is or falling for email spam, well then you have to give MSFT credit for designing an OS that lasts any time at all with the masses. There is nothing more dangerous than a completely clueless users let loose upon the OS and the net. We are talking bigger idiots than the best idiot proofing here, and I should know as I have to fix their machines 6 days a week.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[DumbparameciuM]

Pfeh, I wish it was still that easy to delete your account - I tried to delete my Hotmail/live account this morning, but apparently I do not have the correct combinations of runes and chicken bones required.

Re:I still use Hotmail

[JWSmythe]

You've never been to Tijuana, haven you? They have the highest density of pharmacia's, strip clubs, bars, and brothels I've ever seen. I'm sure they spam too, I've just somehow managed to stay off their spam lists.

Re:I still use Hotmail

[edb]

I can't tell from TFA whether the user's custom whitelist has also disappeared on the affected accounts. If it has been deleted, then your newly-emptied inbox might start filling up quickly, even if you thought you had whitelist protection on your inbox. S/N ratio essentially zero? Even negative?

Still there

[TClevenger]

Just logged into my (throwaway) Hotmail for the first time in a month and sure enough, all 1,625 spam messages are still in my inbox. (And only 25 spam messages in the Junk folder.)

Re:Still there

[Soukosa]

Meanwhile I have to tell everyone that has a Hotmail account that I email something to through my custom domain to check their spam folder because it feels anything from that domain is spam. I've run into this problem with other people sending emails through their custom domains too. Nice to see that their spam system is working as intended!

Re:I still use Hotmail

[Grishnakh]

Mexicans aren't as computer-savvy as the Nigerians, apparently.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[Grishnakh]

Maybe on your crappy keyboard, but on my Dvorak keyboard, it's about 7.25".

Do YOU have any idea?

[kumanopuusan]

"Users can still log in without issue."

Remarkably, this is still a nonsensical statement. "Sans issue" or "without issue" is commonly seen in the phrase "died without issue" in which it refers to dying without siring or bearing children. Used as an uncountable noun, issue refers to one's offspring. As a countable noun, issue may refer to technical problems. The error here is with "issue" not "sans."

"Users can still log in without issues." means that users can log in without any problems.
"Users can still log in without issue." or "Users can still log in sans issue." means that users are still not required to have children before they can log in.

Re:That's what I was going to say

[RocketRabbit]

Careful, MS will actually name their next cloud service thusly.

please try not to be ignorant

[robb3030]

well now. despite all the histeria. This sounds very much like what's known in the business as an Exchange dial tone recovery. what does this mean? well look it up before commenting recklessly. but I'll provide a synopsis quickly simply, the underlying Microsoft Exchange datastore (hierarchical jet based database) has had some sort of data loss or corruption. The easiest way to maintain continuity of service in this scenario is to allow the user to access an empty mailbox and then restore the underlying data as soon as feasible. this is what is going on. Once a dial tone restore has been completed the data restore is done over a longer period of time. It's called best practice in the event of a large data failure. I'm no MS fanboi. From someone that knows, and I really know about exchange (vastly better than the majority of MS employed Exchange engineers)... it seems like they doing the best things under the situation in are in.

Re:please try not to be ignorant

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

You may know a little about exchange, but you seem to be as clueless as MS about how to treat your customers.

Re:please try not to be ignorant

[robb3030]

you wanna expand? I wasnt talking about their customer service. I was talking about technical best practice. If you want to talk regarding customer service. see the following. 1. I'm sure everyone will gt there emails back eventually. 2. Big cloud providers (and hotmail is a cloud) are all eventually going to have this sort of problem, including MS, Google, Amazon etc. even if you guarantee 99.999 % uptime, eventually you are going to have an issue. 3. MS should tell each and every customer when the ETA on expected email recovery is, if they dont know they should be honest about it and tell people they dont yet know but commit to giving regular updates. 4. This is bog standard incident management. something every IT OPs manager should know how to do (see the ITIL manuals for good practice IT incident management process - it's not hard...). I havent actually looked at how MS is handling the business comms of this particular incident, I would however be a little surprised if they didn't have some sort of reasonable comms, if not - Very bad MS...) 5. I should also point out given the technology deployed (MS Exchange on the back end DB stores) the system is designed to maintain service continuity by offering the effected individual an empty mailbox whilst the mail data is restored - restoring this amount of mail data can be an incredibly laborious and time consuming task - I think you'll find that given the option of no mail data vs no mailbox most people would want an empty mailbox, this is backed up by an enormous amount of research. However this may be different for social media AKA Windows Live and I would be very interest to hear people's opinions on windows live and dial tone restore?? would you prefer in an outage to lose the data and have an 'empty' Windows Live account? or would you prefer to wait say 48 hours to have your data restored but with no account active?? This is IT people, its complex, shit goes wrong, shit gets fixed, expect that much... Further to your point its how we react once shit goes wrong that earns us stripes...

Re:In related news,

[Rakishi]

Gmail will delete inactive accounts as well, I think the time for them is nine months or so.

Its Microsoft. What did you expect?

[JustNiz]

Isn't it amazing how a company (Microsoft) can blatantly rub the noses of their customers in a "we dont care about you" attitude repeatedly and over decades.
They never innovate. They are often years late to market with dull "me too" products that are always more buggy, more limited, less secure, less interoperable and harder-to-use versions of other existing products, and yet even though there are much better alternatives available, even free ones, many if not most indviduals and even big businesses amazingly still actively choose Microsoft products and services for their infrastructure even at inflated prices.
It totally blows my mind why this is the case.

Re:Well, one thing mail has to do is keeping the m

[Cro Magnon]

The last time I paid for email, it sucked nearly as bad as Yahoo (which was total crap at the time). Gmail might be free, but so far it's better than anything else I tried, including paid.

for what I want it to do, it works fine

[axl917]

Havent had to use the shoddy interface in a long time.

How much of a fancy interface does one need to send and receive an e-mail? Honestly, there are some of us who don't need anything more than "login and there it is", so it doesn't really matter in the end what/where we use. I have had a hotmail account since late 96/early 97 (friends who have to register there or elsewhere as "joesmith8948908908903290" or whatnot express awe at my 4-character user name), and for what I want it to do, it works fine.

Azure got wasted

[Ilgaz]

"Windows Live 2011" is what Azure, a real neat idea has become. Sad but true.