150,000 Gmail Users Lose Emails

Thousands of Gmail users got an unpleasant surprise over the weekend when they logged on to their email and found everything was gone. Imagine many years worth of correspondence vanish into thin air without any explanation whatsoever. Well, that is what 150,000 Gmail users experienced last Saturday causing panic-stricken customers to flood the Gmail Help Forum.

Around 3PM Eastern Time Sunday, Google released a statement that less than 0.08% account holders (later reduced to %0.02) were affected by a bug causing accounts auto-reset. Gmail has an estimated membership of around 193 million users, and although it may seem like a small percentage, it is enough to cause concern for users worldwide.

Affected users found their accounts reset back to what it was the first day they signed on to Gmail, some even received welcome letters. Labels, themes, add-ons, folders, signature and other settings all went back to the default. Some were lucky enough to still have their contacts intact, but most of the affected users experienced a total re-birth of their accounts and not in a way they’d like. To say that they were displeased with the service is an understatement.

The Gmail Help Forum was froth with speculations that emails were being hacked, however Google already acknowledged the issue as caused by a bug in the system.  As of 5:15 AM, an update on Google Mail’s Apps Status Dashboard reassured customers that the emails were not “lost” and that service will be up and running in a few hours. In fact some affected users have had their emails restored and that service will be back to “normal” soon enough.

According to the Gmail blog, a bug affected the system by deleting some copies of data containing emails. The said bug came from a storage software update, when the software engineers discovered the bug; the update was stopped right away. They were able to work on the resolution and recover data for affected users within 30 hours, at least for some. Apart from resetting user accounts, the incident also caused some affected users to not receive any email from Saturday, February 27 to late afternoon Monday, February 28, 2011.

The glitch not only affected individuals using the email service it also affected business and put sensitive information at risk. How many people use their email for banking, insurance and business correspondence? Having all that information go down the drain definitely made users wish that they’d back up their mail before everything got nuked. The fact that Google is able to restore the emails, gives everyone a sigh of relief. It assured people that hackers were not involved in the incident and their emails are still secured. When we think about online safety, we often think about securing our network, computer, mobile and download, we never think that something as silly as a bug can affect the proverbial cloud most of us rely on.

With all the scary talk it makes one think of how vulnerable the cloud can be. To ease your worried minds, you may want to back up your email on your computer by using a POP email client like Outlook. Here’s how to download a copy of your Gmail messages.

• Sign in to Gmail.
• Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
• Select Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded).
• Click Save Changes.
• Open the mail client you’ve configured for Gmail, and check for new messages.

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