Charter Accidentally Wipes 14K Email Accounts

dacut writes with the sad news that Charter Communications, which provides cable and Internet access to 2.6 million customers, accidentally and irretrievably wiped out 14,000 active email accounts while trying to clear out unused accounts. They're providing a $50 credit to each affected customer, which seems a paltry sum for anyone who was less than diligent about backing up their email — though those who relied on Charter's webmail interface had no easy way to accomplish backups. From the article: "There is no way to retrieve the messages, photos and other attachments that were erased from inboxes and archive folders across the country on Monday, said Anita Lamont, a spokeswoman for the suburban St. Louis-based company. 'We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error,' Lamont said Thursday when the company announced the gaffe."

Crap

[Stevyn]

I am one of those people who uses Gmail as a backup betting it's more reliable than my hard drive.

Standard statement...

[Capt James McCarthy]

I've always told users, that email is not a storage medium. It's a volatile one.

Yes, they should have had backups now days, but none the less, if you want it saved, don't leave it in your inbox.

I've had folks complain that the trash automatically was cleaned out every three days. WTF?

Re:Crap

[AKAImBatman]

Unlike Charter (who probably uses something not all that different from an mbox file), Google has a global, highly redundant data store that is easier to insert information into than it is to delete from. Even when an email is "deleted" from the GMail interface, there's no guarantee that the data in GoogleFS is actually gone. Google themselves have stated that it may take months (or even years) before the data is purged from the system.

Which is part of the reason why I actually trust Google with my email. I wouldn't mind them providing a proper backup mechanism (no, POP3 isn't a worthwhile mechanism for me), but it simply isn't as necessary as some hosting providers.

That being said, this entire mess could have been avoided if someone took a tape backup before purging data from the system... :-/

Re:/golfclap

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not 100% positive, but a company called Synacor hosts Charter's website. Synacor also does email hosting. You can find lots of complaints about them on the DSL Reports [google.com] website. I wouldn't be surprised if Charter's email was hosted by Synacor, too. They have had problems with email in the past. Lots of problems.

Host you own

[snarfies]

Back in the dot-com days I worked for a local ISP, and established my online identity over the years. The company died, and I lost my long-established email address. Lesson learned - I obtained my own domain name and webhosting, just on shared servers, mind you, and now I have a portable identity that I have control over. Webhost screwing up? I've had it happen a few times now. I just point the domain elsewhere. I have unlimited POP, IMAP, and even webmail. Multiple spam controls that I can fiddle with. And I don't have to worry about Google, Yahoo, etc fiddling with anything either.

It isn't hard, either. My 63-yo father is now doing the same thing, as he switched ISPs for the first time now that he can get DSL out on the farm, and he isn't the most technical guy.

Email not backed up

[Maximum Prophet]

I know many people are saying that Charter should have backed up the email, but I used to work for AOL, and I know they don't back up any of the email, other than having redundant servers in multiple locations. By not sending your email to tape or other media, they can't be hauled into court and forced to give it up. Once it's gone, it's gone.

That said, it's standard practice when deleting an account to mark the data as deleted, so that it looks like it's gone to the user, but it's actually pending deletion later. Then, when someone complains or pays their bill, you can restore what was "deleted." After a predetermined amount of time, if you don't complain, a cleanup script deletes it permenently.

Re:Crap

[cayenne8]

I just try to avoid the problems of letting someone else be in control of my email...so, I run my own email server. If I blow it away or forget to back it up..shame on me, but, I don't have to worry about someone going "oops".

Re:Crap

[pnuema]

My choices for broadband are Charter or AT&T. I despise AT&T's business practices, and yet I will pay them whatever they ask for - I'd sooner do without internet all together than be a Charter customer again.

A year or two ago, our internet access stopped working. Over the course of three weeks, I spent 12 hours on the phone with Charter support. During those calls I was told: they had deleted my MAC address from the database, that they had no record of me ever being a Charter customer (despite the cable boxes in my living room), that they had no record of me having internet access, and that I was stealing cable.

Finally, I got fed up, and called AT&T, got DSL and Dish. Once everything was working, I packed up all of Charter's equipment, brought it down to a local office, and told them to shut me off. This was a Saturday.

On Monday, my Dish stops working. I call up the Dish people; they come out around 10 days later to tell me that Charter had disconnected my satellite and had put a terminator on the line.

Fuck Charter. Fuck them in the neck with a donkey cock. They are the worst of the worst of companies (believe it or not, this is the short version - the long version is worse). If they actually had to compete, instead of having a monopoly, they would have been out of business years ago - and I would have bought some of their assets so I could set them on fire.

Fuck Charter.