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FYI, before you chastise the OP for not backing up, please take a minute and think about the fact that this can happen with Gmail too. Have you backed up your e

FYI, before you chastise the OP for not backing up, please take a minute and think about the fact that this can happen with Gmail too. Have you backed up your email? I think Google has the responsibility to make it VERY clear that you can lose access to your content without notice. I don't think users truly understand that now.

kilroy123 5y ago
Yes. I started to back up all my gmail emails, years ago, after reading about such horror stories. Eventually, I just switched to fastmail and gave up Google altogether.
zanethomas 5y ago
I use protonmail for email I care about.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
smt88 5y ago
I have been backing up my email since I was a young teenager. These days, I grab my Google Takeout every year or so and also have a Fastmail account that pulls in every other email I receive.
iforgotpassword 5y ago
I agree. People quickly jump to "you're not paying for it so what did you expect" but without a warning in big red letters saying "we could fuck you over any day" this has the same vibe as a drug dealer giving you you first hit for free. I lost access to my Yahoo mail address from teenage days and consecutively the YouTube account associated with it. The videos are still up and it's just random shenanigans, but still. Learned my lesson with big tech companies.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I hope that everyone here has taken action to push for those big warnings in their own SaaS and like products. And from now on always remember to tell that in their sales pitches. As anything else is just evil...
syshum 5y ago
>>Have you backed up your email? Yes... Every piece of data I have that I care about is backed up following a 3-2-1 model I am also in the process of moving off Gmail due to the Legacy termination. >I don't think users truly understand that now. In my experience user don't truly understanding anything, given that I work in data storage I take is seriously, I am also called on my people on a semi regular basis to recover from data loss because their drive crashed, or something like that. every time I attempt to educate them on low cost backup solutions to prevent it in the future, less than 1% even after suffering data loss will learn the lesson and start doing backups That is for onPrem hardware failure. For a service like Google, facebook, Microsoft, etc they just simply do not believe they will ever lose that data. Hell just the other say in a sysadmin forum people were debating is business even need to backup data in Office 365 because "that would be a waste of money" People have taken the meme of "internet never forgets" far to literally
- oezi 5y ago
  I am CS mayor and would say that I failed to create a system that works reliably for backup. My digital footprint is only something like 2 TB, but none of my devices can store this kind amount of data at once without external HDDs. So doing a backup is a step by step manual and time consuming process of downloading and juggling data, rotating individual backups, etc. I rarely could think of doing it more than once per year.
  - syshum 5y ago
    In this day there is very limited reasons to not have backups, Even if your devices can not store that kinda of data, and 2TB is nothing IMO... (My home has raw storage online capacity of over 100TB right now, and probably triple that in offline / non-powered on storage) There are countless economical cloud backup services, and of you are creative ways to put import things into multiple "free" services For example one person was really concerned about their photos, but they did not want to pay for a proper backup. My suggestion then was at a minimum to use 2 or more of the free photo services, They had a Amazon Prime Subscription, used an iPhone, and had a google account so Prime Photos, Google Photos, and iCloud where all options, picking at least 2 of them would be better than nothing. It would not be a proper 3-2-1 backup, but it would protect against something like random account deletion from one of the providers The point is, there are creative ways to ensure access to data with out having to have a massive storage array in your home like I do. I value privacy and control more than most, this is also why all my home automation non-cloud based, I dont use Google Home, Siri, Homekit, Alexa etc. and I will never buy a device that requires cloud service to use. But I recognize I am not like most people sadly....
deepspace 5y ago
Yes, I have been backing up my email regularly for the past 25+ years, just like any other important data. I have 3-2-1 copies of everything I have ever done on a computer during that time. I cannot understand why anyone would tolerate the risk of losing important information.
- oezi 5y ago
  How many disks does this require?
ryandrake 5y ago
I don't see how users don't understand this by now. I will not put anything on a cloud service (let alone a free cloud service) that I rely on in any way. Including E-mail. If my only copy of some content is in the cloud, that means I have deliberately made the decision that that content is expendable and my life would not be affected if my account disappeared tomorrow. It's really sad that we have to read these stories weekly, but somehow the word just isn't getting out there. Don't rely on someone else's computer to host the only copy of irreplaceable content! This does not absolve cloud providers from being better stewards of people's data--it's just a cry to be careful with things that are valuable. I know this sounds like blaming the victim, but how many more of these stories have to be posted to overcome everyone's "It won't happen to me" attitude?
- hda2 5y ago
  > It's really sad that we have to read these stories weekly, but somehow the word just isn't getting out there It's because companies - sometimes purposefully - continue to make it difficult to maintain an off-line backup of cloud data in a reasonable way, and people can't be arsed to figure out how each service allows users to backup their data (if at all). The most accommodating cloud service on this front, google with their google takeout service, offer scheduled multi-GB zipped archives for download. Backups should be automatic and standard. Offer a standard incremental syncing api (not downloads) and integrate it as an opt-out (not opt-in) step for signing up. Then have an industry-standard app (like how google authenticator is standard for otp) handle backups. Anything more complicated than that and will continue reading stories like this.
- PakG1 5y ago
  I'm not sure how my parents would be able to run their own email service or manage a backup routine if they went the POP3 & SMTP route. The reason why cloud services have grown so much is because they make computing services accessible and easy to use for a much wider portion of the population. I think it will take multiple generations of technological fluency indoctrination before we can get to the point where people can use these types of services without relying on cloud services. Cloud services are likely here to stay and likely will maintain their power unless regulation steps in.
stackedinserter 5y ago
Seriously, we've been in this for a decade at least. There was enough time to learn this single lesson: data stored in someone's cloud is not your data. In 2022 it's plain stupid to keep your email in Gmail or rely on Google Photos as the only storage for your family archive. People pay $15/mo for Netflix, but can't pay $50/year for a email address? Nobody will lend a random person $1000, but people still happily give their work, worth orders of magnitude more, to a company that has literally zero obligations to them. I sincerely sympathize with this couple and wish they will eventually recover their stuff, but c'mon, let's be proactive and prevent such incidents (and educate/help others)
- oezi 5y ago
  But paying 50 USD still keeps the data in the cloud. You cannot spend money to solve the backup problem, you need a process and quite a lot of technical and organizational skill. I honestly think there are less than 1 in 100 people who have a working system of backups that would bring them back all their photos taken from their mobile phones. Since Google turned off syncing of photos to Google Drive, my system broke for instance. Like OP, I haven't had time to set a new backup process up since then.
  - emilburzo 5y ago
    > Since Google turned off syncing of photos to Google Drive, my system broke for instance. Like OP, I haven't had time to set a new backup process up since then. Do it now[1]. Assuming what you already have setup for Google Drive is using rclone, it's probably not going to take you longer than what it took to write that comment. [1] https://wiki.emilburzo.com/backing-up-your-google-digital-life/ https://wiki.emilburzo.com/backing-up-your-google-digital-li...
  - JamesAdir 5y ago
    OP stated that they were paying customers, this is very troubling. But in any case, at least as a paying customer you might have some legal recourse. As a non paying customer I don't think you can do anything. Also as you've mentioned you must have backups at all times. no matter if you're paying or not.

kilroy123 5y ago

Yes. I started to back up all my gmail emails, years ago, after reading about such horror stories. Eventually, I just switched to fastmail and gave up Google altogether.

zanethomas 5y ago

I use protonmail for email I care about.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

smt88 5y ago

I have been backing up my email since I was a young teenager. These days, I grab my Google Takeout every year or so and also have a Fastmail account that pulls in every other email I receive.

iforgotpassword 5y ago

I agree. People quickly jump to "you're not paying for it so what did you expect" but without a warning in big red letters saying "we could fuck you over any day" this has the same vibe as a drug dealer giving you you first hit for free. I lost access to my Yahoo mail address from teenage days and consecutively the YouTube account associated with it. The videos are still up and it's just random shenanigans, but still. Learned my lesson with big tech companies.

Ekaros 5y ago
I hope that everyone here has taken action to push for those big warnings in their own SaaS and like products. And from now on always remember to tell that in their sales pitches. As anything else is just evil...

syshum 5y ago

>>Have you backed up your email? Yes... Every piece of data I have that I care about is backed up following a 3-2-1 model I am also in the process of moving off Gmail due to the Legacy termination. >I don't think users truly understand that now. In my experience user don't truly understanding anything, given that I work in data storage I take is seriously, I am also called on my people on a semi regular basis to recover from data loss because their drive crashed, or something like that. every time I attempt to educate them on low cost backup solutions to prevent it in the future, less than 1% even after suffering data loss will learn the lesson and start doing backups That is for onPrem hardware failure. For a service like Google, facebook, Microsoft, etc they just simply do not believe they will ever lose that data. Hell just the other say in a sysadmin forum people were debating is business even need to backup data in Office 365 because "that would be a waste of money" People have taken the meme of "internet never forgets" far to literally

oezi 5y ago
I am CS mayor and would say that I failed to create a system that works reliably for backup. My digital footprint is only something like 2 TB, but none of my devices can store this kind amount of data at once without external HDDs. So doing a backup is a step by step manual and time consuming process of downloading and juggling data, rotating individual backups, etc. I rarely could think of doing it more than once per year.
- syshum 5y ago
  In this day there is very limited reasons to not have backups, Even if your devices can not store that kinda of data, and 2TB is nothing IMO... (My home has raw storage online capacity of over 100TB right now, and probably triple that in offline / non-powered on storage) There are countless economical cloud backup services, and of you are creative ways to put import things into multiple "free" services For example one person was really concerned about their photos, but they did not want to pay for a proper backup. My suggestion then was at a minimum to use 2 or more of the free photo services, They had a Amazon Prime Subscription, used an iPhone, and had a google account so Prime Photos, Google Photos, and iCloud where all options, picking at least 2 of them would be better than nothing. It would not be a proper 3-2-1 backup, but it would protect against something like random account deletion from one of the providers The point is, there are creative ways to ensure access to data with out having to have a massive storage array in your home like I do. I value privacy and control more than most, this is also why all my home automation non-cloud based, I dont use Google Home, Siri, Homekit, Alexa etc. and I will never buy a device that requires cloud service to use. But I recognize I am not like most people sadly....

deepspace 5y ago

Yes, I have been backing up my email regularly for the past 25+ years, just like any other important data. I have 3-2-1 copies of everything I have ever done on a computer during that time. I cannot understand why anyone would tolerate the risk of losing important information.

oezi 5y ago
How many disks does this require?

ryandrake 5y ago

I don't see how users don't understand this by now. I will not put anything on a cloud service (let alone a free cloud service) that I rely on in any way. Including E-mail. If my only copy of some content is in the cloud, that means I have deliberately made the decision that that content is expendable and my life would not be affected if my account disappeared tomorrow. It's really sad that we have to read these stories weekly, but somehow the word just isn't getting out there. Don't rely on someone else's computer to host the only copy of irreplaceable content! This does not absolve cloud providers from being better stewards of people's data--it's just a cry to be careful with things that are valuable. I know this sounds like blaming the victim, but how many more of these stories have to be posted to overcome everyone's "It won't happen to me" attitude?

hda2 5y ago
> It's really sad that we have to read these stories weekly, but somehow the word just isn't getting out there It's because companies - sometimes purposefully - continue to make it difficult to maintain an off-line backup of cloud data in a reasonable way, and people can't be arsed to figure out how each service allows users to backup their data (if at all). The most accommodating cloud service on this front, google with their google takeout service, offer scheduled multi-GB zipped archives for download. Backups should be automatic and standard. Offer a standard incremental syncing api (not downloads) and integrate it as an opt-out (not opt-in) step for signing up. Then have an industry-standard app (like how google authenticator is standard for otp) handle backups. Anything more complicated than that and will continue reading stories like this.
PakG1 5y ago
I'm not sure how my parents would be able to run their own email service or manage a backup routine if they went the POP3 & SMTP route. The reason why cloud services have grown so much is because they make computing services accessible and easy to use for a much wider portion of the population. I think it will take multiple generations of technological fluency indoctrination before we can get to the point where people can use these types of services without relying on cloud services. Cloud services are likely here to stay and likely will maintain their power unless regulation steps in.

stackedinserter 5y ago

Seriously, we've been in this for a decade at least. There was enough time to learn this single lesson: data stored in someone's cloud is not your data. In 2022 it's plain stupid to keep your email in Gmail or rely on Google Photos as the only storage for your family archive. People pay $15/mo for Netflix, but can't pay $50/year for a email address? Nobody will lend a random person $1000, but people still happily give their work, worth orders of magnitude more, to a company that has literally zero obligations to them. I sincerely sympathize with this couple and wish they will eventually recover their stuff, but c'mon, let's be proactive and prevent such incidents (and educate/help others)

oezi 5y ago
But paying 50 USD still keeps the data in the cloud. You cannot spend money to solve the backup problem, you need a process and quite a lot of technical and organizational skill. I honestly think there are less than 1 in 100 people who have a working system of backups that would bring them back all their photos taken from their mobile phones. Since Google turned off syncing of photos to Google Drive, my system broke for instance. Like OP, I haven't had time to set a new backup process up since then.
- emilburzo 5y ago
  > Since Google turned off syncing of photos to Google Drive, my system broke for instance. Like OP, I haven't had time to set a new backup process up since then. Do it now[1]. Assuming what you already have setup for Google Drive is using rclone, it's probably not going to take you longer than what it took to write that comment. [1] https://wiki.emilburzo.com/backing-up-your-google-digital-life/ https://wiki.emilburzo.com/backing-up-your-google-digital-li...
- JamesAdir 5y ago
  OP stated that they were paying customers, this is very troubling. But in any case, at least as a paying customer you might have some legal recourse. As a non paying customer I don't think you can do anything. Also as you've mentioned you must have backups at all times. no matter if you're paying or not.