UK ISP PlusNet Accidentally Deletes 700GB of Email

steste writes "A tale of email woe for PlusNET ISP. According to this announcement they have spent the last month attempting to recover 700GB of accidentally deleted emails. By their estimates, up to 12GB of these had yet to be read by their recipients. Despite the efforts of a data recovery specialist, they have now given up on recovering any of the deleted data. Well that's one way to deal with spam." Spam is one thing; I just wonder how inevitable losses like this one square with the EU-wide data retention laws.

Conspiracy

[zanderredux]

"Accidentally deleted", "despite of best efforts"....

Yeah, right!

On the plus side....

[krell]

On the plus side, that's 699GB of spams nobody will have to worry about now.

I guess if I look at my email

[TouchOfRed]

My inbox will say, nothing to see here. Move along.

Clicked on the Read More link just now

[Rik Sweeney]

and got

404: The requested URL (hardware/06/08/03/1319220.shtml) was not found.

Looks like PlusNet aren't the only ones losing things!

I'm here all night, try the veal.

mudda mudda

[Roody Blashes]

"oops" is spelled "t-h-a-n-k g-o-d f-o-r u-n-e-m-p-l-o-y-m-e-n-t b-e-n-e-f-i-t-s"

Hmm. Good thing they're British...

[Doches]

I imagine that if this sort of thing were to happen in the U.S., the government would get involved real quick. Not, you know, because some subscribers got hurt, but because all of those precious, precious terrorist communications that were lost forever, dooming the Fort Worth Convention Center to premature destruction at the hands of an angry Palestian truck driver.

Or maybe this can't happen in the U.S. at all. Maybe there's some quiet deal where large ISPs can simply back their data up on blade servers in Langley...

Spam wonderful spam

[mcai8rw2]

"Well that's one way to deal with spam"

Shh! You insensitive clod! Some of us need that spam...how else are we supposed to maintain powerful erections with that "s3xy b@by"!

Deleted emails? It obviously didn't run linux...ah no wait, hang on.

A quote from the ISP

[halr9000]

"My bad."

12GBs yet to be read?

[Rik Sweeney]

By their estimates, up to 12GB of these had yet to be read by their recipients.

Here's the break down:

• 3GB: Viagra
• 3GB: Manhood Enhancements
• 2GB: Lonely Housewives in your area
• 3.9GB: Loans
• 100MB: Various GIFs of the Zidane headbutt from the World Cup

NSA has 'em

[slcdb]

They should just ask the NSA to send their copies of the emails to PlusNet.

Heck, the NSA could turn this into a side business. If they spin it right, maybe they can convince the general public that they're not spying, they're just providing a cutting-edge data backup service!

Never press the shiny candy like red button!!!

[Dutchmaan]

"Hey what's this big red *Press ONLY in case of federal investigation!* button for?"

*click*

poor intern

[theonetruekeebler]

"Hey, there were a bunch of hidden files in my home directory, so I typed rm -rf .* to get rid of them. That shouldn't take half an hour, should it?"

(I'm so nervous seeing that on my screen I'm afraid to hit the "Submit" button)

hear hear

[rucs_hack]

My response is 'if you don't like a thing, make a better one'. Can the complainers make a better slashdot? Hmm, let me see.

Do the abilities required for such a venture require

a) A willingness to try and realise there will be the odd piece of news that is repeated.

b)Being a Whining Biatch.

Well, if it's (b), then the whiners are for teh win. Somehow I have my doubts...

Re:Data Recovery Specialist

[idontgno]

"Accidentally deleted" probably means "we had a hardware failure and we're too cheap to recover everything".

Actually, "Accidentally deleted" means "wiped the live disk array instead of the new disk array we were going to migrate on to." The Register has a brief writeup [theregister.co.uk].

System Administrator Lesson 14: Shared consoles and remote administration are convenient, especially for wiping the wrong system. Check system ID before hitting enter!"

"Daddy..."

[plasmacutter]

"what does this button do?"

-NOOOOOO!

Re:Hmm. Good thing they're British...

[Anonymous Coward]

NSA's in Fort Meade, MD, you dumbshit.

That's what they WANT you to think.

Spam Filter

[weasello]

Spam Filter

Filter with 0% Tolerance
Are you absolutely sure?

[ok] [cancel]

Re:poor intern

[Skapare]

No, it shouldn't take half an hour. You obviously need to get a faster computer, faster disk, and configure the DMA correctly :-)

Oh, and I hid some files in your root directory for you to practice on.

I don't understand how this is possible...

[chrisspurgeon]

...I don't recall working for PlusNet.

All eggs in one basket?

[Skapare]

They had all their eggs in one basket? Where's the live replica machine? Where are the redundant copies? Oh wait, this is a for-profit business. Never mind.

Re:Conspiracy

[Ohreally_factor]

You guys have fat pipes? We're still stuck with tubes. They're getting clogged up with internets, too.

Re:A quote from the ISP

[fbjon]

Why do you septics say that?

We like to stay clean.

Oh, woe...

[Nom du Keyboard]

I guess some Nigerians will have trouble making the rent this month now.

Re:Compensation for Customers?

[finiteSet]

I'd be pissed if, say, Google possibly deleted some unread mail, and I'd never know if I was missing out.

Yeah, that would be pretty terrible. So to spare you that fate... here is exactly what you would be missing out on:

Hi,

Valjjum from 1, 25$
Vjjagra from 3, 35$
Ambjjen
Cjjalis from 3, 75$

,
,
,
,
,
these myths to justify their existence.
There was a lot to argue with there, maybe not a lot but some. A good
deal of jumping-to-conclusions and more than a bit of rationalization.

Hell, I could probably recover 95% of PlusNet customers' emails from my delete box.

Re:Data Recovery Specialist

[tehshen]

I love it how that Reg article has a big advert in the middle asking "Do you have too much information?"

How very apt

Re:NSA has 'em

[failure-man]

Finally! My tax dollars doing something productive!
 
Do they support rsync over ssh?

Re:Only 700 Megs?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not 5-10 gigs per user. That's 5-10 gigs per day deleted on average for all users who pester me with trivial matters. Example:

User A calls and says; "Hi... I'm getting that annoying over quota message in my e-mail again. Can you give me more space?"

Me: "Sure. No problem. You'll have it in about five minutes".

User A: "M'kay. Thanks bunches".

I look at my Monkey spreadsheet to see who has pissed me off in the past two days and to what level. I rate them on a scale of 1-10 for monkey-like behavior. I pick enough users to give me space to throw at User A's quota (who will later lose that space when I need it for User K tomorromow morning).

Whilst looking at the spreadsheet I get a call from User G who says: "Dammit! I can't find the memo I was writing earlier this morning. I KNOW I saved it"!

Me: "Are you sure"?

User G: "YES I'm sure!!! I hit the floppy disk icon on the toolbar that is supposed to save it".

Me: "Ahhhh... uh-oh. Well THAT's the problem. The correct way to save is using the File | Save... option in the menu. The toolbars throughout the organization have changed due to a mandatory upgrade from Microsoft and there's a new icon that resembles the floppy icon but it's a shredder. That's so that we're compliant with the 'Virtual CYA Act of 2002' You should have gotten an e-mail about it last week.

User G: "E-mail! Last week! Remember I couldn't get e-mail and had to come down to your office to ask you to fix my quota because my phone was acting weird? I didn't get the e-mail. So you're saying it's gone"?

Me: "Yeah. It's gone".

User G: "What about backups. You DO keep backups don't you"? Clearly, he's about to have a coronory by now.

Me: "Yes, of all essential data only. What drive were you saving to"?

User G: "The one I always do"!

Me: "What drive letter"?

User G: "I don't know!! The one that Word saves to when I hit the floppy button"!

Me: "Ooh. Ouch. Well, that doesn't tell me much since there isn't a floppy button like that anymore. And since you didn't get the e-mail, I guess that means we're at a standstill".

User G: "I think I'm going to try and get you fired for incompetence".

Me: "Now look... there's no need for threats. I'm not the one who shredded my documents, hit my mail quota limit and screwed up my phone, now am I? I'll tell you what. Let me see if I can run some data recovery software to get at least part of it back for you. What was the filename and when was it last edited"?

User G: "It was 'Procedural Review Policies - Rev A24 - 24-07-2006.doc'. I last worked on it this morning at about 9:30AM"

Me: "OK. I'll see what I can do". Types: dd bs=1024 count=4096 if=/dev/random of="/home/admins/planning/Procedural Review Policies - Rev A24 - 24-07-2006.doc" I chuckle to myself knowing this will cause his mailbox to be overquota again.

User G: "OK. Let me know as soon as it's done"!

User A calls back: "Hey thanks! The quota messages stopped. But I seem to be having trouble finding something I was working on last Friday in my spreadsheet".

Me: "Let's see if we can fix that..."

Re:Data Recovery Specialist

[British]

but never have I attempted (or read documentation on) re_o_e_i_g _a_a _h_t_s b_e_ s_r_p_d/m_r_o_e_ a_r_s_ e_g_t d_s_s.

Re:I guess if I look at my email

[NoOneInParticular]

if i was going to spam i certainly wouldn't do it from my home computer..

The guy that actually 0wnz your home computer would.