I'm a regular reader of Google Blogoscoped, and yesterday, I experienced a huge shock with regards to my GMail account.

I was able to check my GMail account and emails fine at work.

However just an hour later, when I reached home and attempted to access gmail.com, I was greeted by a "Server Error" as follows:

<blockquote>Server Error

We're sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable. We're currently working to fix the problem – please try logging in to your account in a few minutes.</blockquote>

Fine, I thought – just a small hiccup which the Google folks are working on. Over the next couple of hours I attempted to login every 15 minutes or so but to no avail. By then it was past midnight and I needed to catch up on some sleep, so I decided to head to bed and hoped that things would be resolved by the next morning (i.e. today).

I woke up earlier today, and unfortunately my expectations were dashed. By then I sensed that something was terribly wrong, as the Google folks rarely took > 12 hours to fix such a problem. I accessed the Google Accounts page (google.com/accounts/), and saw the following message:

<blockquote> The account you attempted to access has been deleted. You may click here to sign up for a new account.</blockquote>

A nightmare come true?! I tried logging into my Google Account via www.google.com/accounts/Login but was presented with an invalid username/password error.

I tried to reset my password, and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw the following:

<blockquote> There are no accounts in our system with the E-mail address usermamegmail.com which you entered.</blockquote>

Has my Google account really been deleted? I use it religiously and it is my primary email account. I have over 300mb of CRUCIAL data in my email, none of which I have backups for.

I tried to send an email to my GMail account from another email account, but the email bounced.

Any ideas as to what I should do? This is an emergency for me. :/

Wow, that sounds really bad.

Have you been using any greasemonkey scripts, GDrive or GoogleFS with your Gmail account?

It could be that if you were using any third party extensions that violate the terms, they could delete your account without warning

that sounds scary... makes me want to back up my gmail files now... seems kinda odd though.. did it happen to anyone else?

Garett Rogers, I don't use any greasemonkey scripts whatsoever. I always thought they were kinda dodgy for some reason anyway.

Neither do I use my GMail account for anything other than the reading and writing for regular email. Not even for the storage of personal files.

I'm in a fix and desperately need access to my account. I still see the "Server Error" message when I visit gmail.com.

I would be immensely greatful if anyone could put me in contact with a GMail representative.

As we speak, emails sent to me are being bounced. :/

I'm hesitant to create a new account as I have hopes of an account recovery – and the creation of a new account might hamper the process.

I think someone hack into your gmail account and delete it. It sounds horrible...

AFAIK it's not possible to unregister Google accounts. . . or is it?

I seriously do hope no one would would be as cruel as that.

And i have reason to believe that it isn't really an issue of my account being hacked. How do you explain the "Server Error" messages I'm experiencing on gmail.com? When I tried to login from a fresh computer, I can view the login page fine, but I still get an invalid username/password error. Only a couple of minutes later will the server error message pop up, and i'm not sure what triggers it.

Hope I made myself clear enough.

Once again I would be very greaful for a GMail representative contact. I desperately need my account back up and running.

I've attempted to contact the GMail team via google.com/support/accounts/bi ... and directed them to this thread.

I hope something good comes out of this.

Good Luck Bob..>:)

Thanks Jeff.

I wish someone could shed some insight as to how this could have happened. :-/

I've written to Gmail Team about this thread too. They ignores most letters, so maybe when more people will write about that it'll help...

Thank you very much Ludwik. I really appreciate you support, and any publicity that this thread receives. If anyone else could pass along the link to this thread to a Google rep, I'd be immensely greatful.

GMail is a fantastic service, and I'm sure most of you can identify with me under my current circumstances.

(Groban = me, it's a nick I use.)

I added it to digg: digg.com/links/GMail_Horror_St ...

Thanks Ludwik, every little bit helps.

Again I strongly don't believe that my account was hacked, particularly due to the perculiar server error message I received when my account mysteriously disappeared.

I just cleared my cookies, and I can visit the gmail.com page fine. Of course, I still am unable to access my account.

I will contact Google's Kevin Fox asking him to take a look here, and I'll post it to the front-page. Scary indeed.

I'm completely and utterly thankful for your assistance, Philipp.

Bob I hope you can get this issue resolved. Please keep us up to date if there is a resalution, be it good or bad. Here is hoping it is good.
Oh and for those who dont know french Caro said "I hope that Philipp will be able to help you Bob! I cross the fingers! I am very horrified at it!"

That's a very scary story! Could probably make a movie out of it!!

But for the rest of us, what can we do to keep an efficient backup of our important GMail account informations ?

Is there any other services that can be "more reliable" ?

It make me think to go back to an old POP/IMAP software, maybe on my USB Key so I can really travel with it, just like GMail.

James: I certainly will.

Thank you one and all for your support.

I too am hoping for a prompt resolution!

Did you really expect to be able to store 'CRUCIAL' data reliably on a free service? I'm not saying Google did the right thing, but if you have data that important, you should be backing it up yourself or at the very least have a QoS agreement with your provider.

Let me get this right. You actually use gmail for important emails????

Let me restate that.

You actually use gmail for important emails????

Bob trusts Google...:)

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
phone: (650) 253-0000
fax: (650) 253-0001

I'm sorry, man.. you get what you pay for. Do you really think Google can back up all of that data? I think not. If the hard drive your account was on goes kerplunk, your data is gone, bubba.

To those heading over from digg:

I understand that I should have backed up my email and documents locally using Google's pop service. I suppose I fell victim to Google; where I completely trusted them and their services without any precautions or doubt.

If anything, hopefully some of you have learnt from my experience. Google products can and will faill you sometimes.

I know I've learnt my lesson.

Thanks for the feedback anyhow.

GMail is beta, that means, it's most likely not going to be stable. Why would you put you're crucial data on a beta server and not backup. Sigh

What's your OS? Maybe there are keyloggers/spywares in your system..

Well,

I headed over from Digg, but I'm not gonna say that to you – I too use gmail as my primary email. I have any other account I own forwarded to it. I'm watching this thread to see how this plays out. I'm hoping google comes up with some kind of viable resolution.

We trusts Google that's why we dont backup our files....
The question is should we need to backup our files if there is GDRIVE from Google?

Well... it is still in Beta form...

I use it as my primary email, but nothing in it is important. I move anything to a backup or print it

This is one very good reason to use the pop3 access provided by gmail to back up your email. Something that I do at least once a week.

OMG.

I have gmail account too. But I use POP3 service and download every email. So that I have one copy on my HDD as well as one copy on server.

Thanks for your information. It is worth to keep in mind.

My god thats awful.

I hope they can sort it out

That sucks, hope you find out what happened – please do let us know!

certainly doesnt bode well for googles supposed GDrive concempt the ndoes it ? If they cant keep your Gmail data asecure what makes them think that people will trust their online storage solution when it arrives? Google needs to look into this for you. You should be able to trust that your info is safe on their system if they want people to use it and other products they put out.

No Offense Jeff,

Jeff Stated

"We trusts Google that's why we dont backup our files....
The question is should we need to backup our files if there is GDRIVE from Google?"

But why do you trust someone you dont know? The service is in beta and its free. Do you really think they CARE if they loose your emails???

You get what you pay for...

Ihave no pity for people that do this type of things. I backup all my impotant data daily,weekly and monthly. to 3 different places. Ive lost a HD and I was back up and working within 4 hours.

nightfox: I primarily access my account from two systems, with one using Windows XP and the other using Windows 2k.

The personal Windows XP system is loaded with anti-virus software, anti-spyware software, etc. It's kept secure to the best of my ability, and I'm fairly certain that I don't have any malware or spyware loaded.

As for the Windows 2k system, it's located on a secure government network. The techies keep a very close and watchful eye over it, and I'm confident that no loggers were installed there either.

Again, thank you everyone for your comments of support (and critcism).

Some people have said it, but seriously...you have "CRUCIAL" data on GMail?? It's a BETA SERVICE. Use it like one. There's no reason you should have data that's not backed up elsewhere on GMail, and they are in no way responsible for your loss. Beta, man...sheesh!

I am using gmail as my primary email account as well. And I'll be losing contact to a lot of my contacts if this thing happen to me.

I gotta start running POP and backup all my gmail now....

Bob,

I am really sorry about your situation.

I cannot imagine the trauma you are going through, I really hope that the issue is just a minor glitch and is fixed quickly.

As to the comments from Asiago and Rob, no e-mail is important when everything is working perfectly fine, but when things don't go as planned what you once thought as not important is important.
Its like the cliche "junk is something, which only after you rid it becomes treasure".

For thoughts about backing up your e-mails, so that we don't have a rude awakening is to use portable thunderbird (available from:
portableapps.com/apps/internet ...)

Thanks.
Ghostein.

this is troubling for those of us who save a backup of our primary e-mail account(s) on gmail by auto-forwarding to their gmail account. i have about 1.5gb of message on gmail – it's my backup. guess i'm looking for an alternative solution.

Google is the one advertising the service. If they fail to perform that service, free or not, they are responsible for it. If they cannot perform their duties when they have promoted a service to the public, then they should not provide it. Important emails or not, the service should be reliable as advertised. Because it is free is unimportant, Bob has sustained damages because his email was valuable to him. The problem is that Bob has no backup (Luckily, I use Gmail account and I have no problems, but I don't have backup either), so how can Bob prove what he had? I would think that there has to be some backup to your account file somewhere in Google. Also, I question the Google "Don't Be Evil" motto. I don't like companies that its hard to get a response from. Isn't it evil not to respond to your customers problems? I would ask everyone to email Google and see if we can get attention to this problem. At the very least, Google deserves to give Bob an explination regarding what has happened.

Bob,

Please don't think most Digg users are as unsympathetic as some above^^

I'm gutted for you.

Free or Not, Gmail is providing a service and as such has a duty to help you restore your data. What is the point in them providing an email service if they can just ditch all your mail?

Good Luck,

Jim

Stop picking on the guy. Just because it says beta it has always been reliable. maybe the first few days of its existence i doubted its reliability but jesus it's Google ... ya know? I don't even back up my email from Google and I use it for literally everything. After reading this I will probably start backing it up but seriously stop picking on the guy. A buddy of mine works at Google I'll ask him if he can help or if he knows someone who can.

Saying the same thing over and over and over about backing up his files and how he should of done it isn't helping. Neither is calling him names. Don't you think he already knows he should have backed it up?

People who state the obvious = tools

WOW

I would never trust a online provider to be my only accesspoint for my email. I have a gmail account, but use my laptop (a Mac) to download and back up my email. Most of the time I find it easier to use Apple Mail to send and get my email than I do logging in to their web interface.

Because I use Apple Mail I can sync that mail with another Mac and in turn have a second backup. When all is said and done I have a copy on Gmail, my laptop and my desktop.

Redundancy! it is something you do for any form of data considered "crucial" "critical" or otherwise "important". Remember you are dealing with computers, they are the point of failure.

Again, I repeat, I *never* violated any of GMail's terms of service.

If a Google rep would like to confirm this, they are more than welcome to. They have my alternate email address (which I used to create a support ticket).

This isn't in any way a publicity stunt. It's a real-life crisis I'm in, and while the purpose of this thread was to obtain advice and more information on how to resolve my problem, I hope it simultaneously serves to remind one and all of the vulnerability of services, especially those in beta.

Again, thank you very much for your words of support.

I use the GMail account as my primary account. I jumped early on with the service and I have set forwarding rules from other accounts to GMail. I have a lot of semi-important files there. I love GMail. It is the only true replacement for the HoTMail of the pre MS glory.

I am aware, though, that GMail is in BETA. It is my own fault if everything goes to limbo tomorrow.

BETA also means:
GOOGLE guys will not loose time providing support to one of the gazillion users they have only because his account disappeared.

Sorry to say it, but if nothing comes out of this 48h from now, it is time for you to move on.

I use Gmail for all my email too. *gasp*

Am I being dumb?

I think he gets the point, everyone has their first encounter with a major mistake. Let this be his first, while I think everyone telling him isn't going to fix it, just let it pass, hopefully you google helped you with something if not well.. hope you can get some of your emails back from people who sent it. Good luck.

Would everyone just STOP mentioning about what Bob "SHOULD" have done. It's over with now. He's already stated that he is aware of his oversight. STOP MENTIONING IT!! It's not helping the issue at hand. If you can contribute to helping Bob get his email back, please help, if all you are going to do is bash him over the head, don't bother.

Bob, I've been using GMail for about 5 months now and I've recieved the "server error" message you are speaking about, but I've always been able to get back in. I truly hope you get back what you need.

He understands all that guys, your comments aren't helpful. Provide solutions instead of telling him what he should have done, 10 people already did that...

i want to moan too.

bla bla beta service bla bla get what you pay for yadda yadda sheesh jesus ffs etc

that's just great, but doesn't help the poor guy at all does it.

i'd suggest using a pop mail client to backup your emails once a week or so, just as others have suggested, if you're insistant on using the www interface.

It would appear that this guy's account has been deleted. I really doubt that Google has a bug in their software – beta or not. <cough>

For those of you saying "it's beta dude!", I would remind you that you are simply giving into the great evil power that is Googlenosis, and further propegating the evil.

Hell, If Hotmail were to delete someone's account, you'd be all over us like fleas on a camel.

And Bob, email tech support with the other account we all know you have. I'm sure they'll fix it, or tell you why they won't.

You probably got hacked and someone deleted your account via the accounts page.
They should make that a 4 day long process so the user is notified if their account is 'marked for deletion'

I am extremely sorry for you Bob. Too bad. Please keep us updated about the response from google. I will pray for you.

And please ignore my earlier comment. I apologize for typing illegible cra*p. I went hysterical and kind of over-reacted. I realize this is a public forum, and people from all around the world, speaking all languages visit this. I should not act like an a*ss.

ha looks like a few of us posted similar things at the same time ;)

"Some people have said it, but seriously...you have "CRUCIAL" data on GMail?? It's a BETA SERVICE. Use it like one. There's no reason you should have data that's not backed up elsewhere on GMail, and they are in no way responsible for your loss. Beta, man...sheesh!"

Yes, some people have said it, so why say it again?

Will be interesting to see how this plays out

Bill Gates: i've already done that.

If any Google rep stumbles upon this thread and would like to take a look, my ticket number is #49434563.

Once again, thank everyone for your words. Point taken and lesson learnt.

Never use a free service for important data

Paid accounts = Right to support
Free account = Right to take a hike

It is sad, it really is.

you can always try www.30gigs.com for a backup email account, works great.

So what's your excuse for not backing up these "critical files"

It sucks to have gotten hosed like that – but really, what did you expect?

You can only hope it was a hiccup in the system and that google, being the mass storage empire that it is, would have a mirror of their system and of course be running everything in at LEAST raid1. One of the largest computing powerhouses in the world shouldn't be caught dead without a backup.

OMG..really feel sorry for you man..hopefully google's rep will contact you soon.

Keep us informed.

Ya know, whenever a forum gets "dug" all you guys do is come in and talk trash. He made a mistake, but do you have any idea how many people use gmail for "crucial" data? Leaving posts like newbcake, Rob, and yah serve no purpose. Lets just hope this guys gets his stuff back. This could be a true test to see if google has adiquate backups of their systems. If not, I certainly won't be using GDrive.

Bob, could you recap on incident /ticket #49434563 and your expereince on resolution ??

John writes,

> you get what you pay for. Do you really think
> Google can back up all of that data? I think
> not. If the hard drive your account was on
> goes kerplunk, your data is gone, bubba.

Nah. It's very, very likely Google makes backups of active accounts. E.g. they store web pages in 3 different locations, so *two* drives can go kerplunk before anything happens. As for inactive Gmail accounts, now that's a different question... might well be that sooner or later all backups are removed too.

Amazing can computer do this..
What next, my free hotmail where I keep my business ledger..

Though I like gmail service, I stopped trusting them. That's one reason why gmail is not my primary account. I know you can't trust any online email services. My main reason for using webmail is not to be trapped in an ISP jail.

Good luck. With Google's data storage goals, I bet they have backups of their servers and will be able to restore your account. I hope.

I've been a digg member longer than most of these fools. I also use gmail as my prime account, since I am in College and it's easy to check what the boss wants done from anywhere. I pray to God, Google fixes your problem. Question though, how would I go backing up my gmail messages without resending them to me? Any idea anyone?

Free or not nobody expects gmail to fail like that. Free stuff doesn't excuse you from having to perform up to your expections.

[Removed personal attack against personal attackers. -Ed.]

Anyhow I contacted Google also on your behalf and pasted information and weblink. Good luck, keep us updated.

I think some people are missing the point when speaking of Google's ability to help.

I am sure that if it would be in one of the support policies that Bob's account would be back before you could say "Did you backup that?"

The point here is that they do not support reviving of accounts (be it if they disappeared because of the system glitch or because an account got hacked and closed on purpose).

Bob's data still exists somewhere. This is not a technical problem but rather one of procedures and service agreements.

/pd: Sorry, I don't understand your question?

ha ha!
*points*

All systems fail at sometime or another. Whether it's and outside source or some other failure.

Everyone go backup everything today. ;)

I agree with The Goon. How many times has this already happened to Gmail users that we know about? If you're Google and you want to promote hosted applications as the future of the internet versus desktop, you better be able to provide reliability. However, I agree that Google has got redundancy in backup. They have to have Bob's account somewhere. If they don't, someone did hack in and delete it. If that is not the case, they should have the info and be able to restore it.

i don't buy it. probabily someone stole your username/password and deleted your account.

good luck getting it back dough.

Have you tried to retrieve your mails using POP. Sometimes I just can't login to my account via the web interface, but pop works perfectly fine.

This happened to me a while back but didn't think much of it. After a week or so I got an e-mail back from Google saying it was lost during "maintenance" and let me re-register the address as a fresh account.

I too was getting that error yesterday when visiting GMail. But fortunately All of my accounts are working fine this morning. All I can say is make sure that you use forwarding in the future. If you have an old POP account, clean it up and forward any GMails you get to that account. Everyone gets burned like that. Take it for what it's worth – A lesson in backing up and press on.

Another thing I am curious about- Have you tried to create a new account using your original ID that was deleted? Did it successfully get created?

Sorry about the loss,
SjN

Bob this really is horrible news, if it's any consolation because of this thread I've just backed up all my mail. So you *are* helping others be more aware of their information and backing it up. I guess that's a very thin silver lining that doesn't help you at all though :(

oh no,,, this is suck!

Is that really Bill Gates?. lol

I just stumbled across this thread and I realized that all of us who are talking smack don't practice what we preach (Backup emails...)

NO BACKUPS?
BWHAHAHAHAH!!

Google please help this guy, restore the glory of GMail back to the golden years! Something like this CAN make a difference. I'm a little dissapointed, it doesn't matter if its still in BETA practically everyone uses gmail. I back up my things through pop but thats not the point. I think the CEOs of Google would definitely do something, they were techies too.

gmail is in beta, but that don't mean we can't trust it. google has a good history of very stable beta releases of things.

but at the same time, if something screws up, they use the beta as an excuse

SjN: I've thought about it, but I don't want to risk it, as that might eliminate any possibility of Google being able to restore my account.

har har google shall fall!

Bob,
   Sorry that this has happened to you. I hope everything gets resolved by Google, as I'm sure that they can at least restore your account to some level. Like you, Gmail is my primary account for all of my e-mail. I use it to consolidate numerous accounts.

   As a result of this incident, I think I will now be making regular backups via POP3. To be honest, when I started using gmail, it was not my main account or e-mail access method, but with it's ease of use and great features it has become that for me, and thus I never really thought about backing it up, as it was no my primary means of access. Now that your incident has brought my attention to the fact that Gmail has indeed become my main email application, I need to address the backup issue immediately.

Once again, sorry that this happened to you, but hopefully many people will learn something from it, as I hope I did.

I also came over here from DIGG.

I had, repeat had, GMail but shut it down last week. I had many login problems and the staff at GMail was utterly useless. I did set up an account over at Yahoo and I’m very happy over there now. I’ll take the less free storage space because I was able to interact with real people at Yahoo through e-mails and on the phone over AND get all my questions answered. Where as I’m still waiting over a month now for a return phone call from anybody at Google.

Sorry to hear of your problems but it may be just a fluke or the start of something worst to come. I suggest that you either use the POP3 method, or some other method to back you stuff up from now on. And most important of all, GET AWAY FROM GMAIL ASAP!!

Gmail is still in beta, surely it's not wise to store "over 300mb of CRUCIAL data" inside a Beta Application??

Yeah – I use Gmail for crucial data. You're not alone by a long shot on that one. I'm beginning to rethink that. Google is generally very reliable hence the interest in this thread I think. I wish you the best in getting your info back!

lol Bill Gates

Here's and idea. Setup and Yahoo account too. Forward all Gmail to a Yahoo account. (For those of us who love Gmail.) What are the chances that both will fail?

This exact thing happened to my friend's Yahoo account. The awful part was that he had over 300 contacts in his address book, none of which were backed up. Yahoo's customer support could do nothing other than say they were 'sorry'

DigitalBrian and others that seem to need to dogpile on this poor guy, grow up and get a life, ok? He didn't make a mistake. Google advertised this as an email service that you can store your emails forever, etc, etc. If you don't realize that for Google *BETA* doesn't mean the same thing as BETA means for most companies.

Google BETA is like 1.0 for most folks. [Removed personal attack. -Ed.]

Bob: I really hope this works out for you, I use gmail as a backup to my private email account (which I run on my own server), and it would suck if I lost it all. Hopefully this is just a glitch and they can recover your info for you. I know how much loosing your email history hurts. Someone hacked my yahoo account, and changed the reg info so I can't recover it. Yahoo was no help at all so I lost about 5 years of history. This is why I run my own email server now.

Hope everything works out for you.

Just a suggestion,
You can set up Gmail to automatically forward a copy of everything to another email address. So open up a secondary Gmail account and have your primary Gmail account forward copies of all mail to it.

"Any ideas as to what I should do? This is an emergency for me. :/"

How about contacting Google support:

mail.google.com/support/bin/re ...

[Removed personal attack. -Ed.]

Google puts a four letter word at the top of the screen, and you totally buy into it. Gmail has been available for well over a year, and it's been open to anyone who wants to sign up for months. It has millions of users. It's not, by any definition of the term, a Beta. What, exactly, will change when Gmail "launches" as a 1.0? Not a damn thing – except those four tiny letters in the upper left will dissapear.

In the meantime, Google gets to hide behind the "beta" label and let performance continue to degrage, blow away people's valuable email, and provide not a whiff of support for those millions of users. Guess what, that saves Google money, and that's the only reason to leave the service as "Beta."

But so long as idiots keep giving Google a pass on this practices, they'll keep doing it. Like I said, morons.

Bob, I hope you get some satisifaction from Google, and that you get your mail back. Please keep us all informed

BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP! Trust no one, not even GOOGLE!

Lol thats dangerous.
Lucky that Gmail is not my primary email :)

   The number of idiots posting here is staggering.

   Rob, you really think that *you* know to backup your hard drives, but *Google* with 200,000 servers hasn't figured that out? One hard drive goes down and now you can't find search results or email or maps or....

   It sounds like a major administrative issue or one HELL of a hack. It's one thing for all the emails to be gone (select all, delete) but how do you drop an entire account?

   Bob, you didn't do anything wrong. Unless you actually took the comments in this thread to heart.

Vincent Clement: Thanks for your suggestion. That has been done already.

Shit happens!!!

Due to the intrinsic untrustworthiness of digital storage I print out all my emails and carry them with me.

You may want to consider doing this. So far I've accumulated 1.5 metric tonnes of paper.

As for a backup – I photocopy all the mails and receive and put them in another lorry that sits 50 metres behind the first lorry.

Needless to say this isn't the best solution. Searching for mails often takes months and hiring the lorries to carry all that paper is costing a fair bit. Still at least I know where my important emails are and if I need to do a 'Backup' my local corner shop loves it.

It's 10p a copy.

Use www.live.com and the future will be bright!!!

i remember having my gmail account innacessible for 4 days ... then it recovered ... but it never said my account was deleted, i just couldn't log in from any computer

Never use things which are in BETA.
Beta is a Warning – Just Test them

GMail is Beta.

Sorry if this disappoints any of you who thought it was more than that ... but it isn't.

It really sucks that you depended on a Beta application for a mission-critical function ... but shame on you, really.

One of the cardinal rules of computing is 'always have a backup'. Gmail provides a POP interface, it would be very easy for you to use Thunderbird or any other favorite client-based email app to maintain a local copy of your emails.

If Google was ReallyNice(tm) they'd dig through thier backup tapes and find your emails ... they're probably in there somewhere, but they are not under any obligation to do so ...

Hey Ralph, how much is Yahoo paying you to write that???

This has happened before.

It happens when the someone higher up on your invite tree pisses Google off via spamming or whatever. They remove all the accounts below them, anyone they've invited and on down.

Account shouldn't be fully gone, it's there, but they're not telling you.

=D

eric.martindalegmail.com

Dude you are in luck. Google doesn't delete any account ever. It also has thousands of backups of everything everywhere. Maybe your username was deleted but Google hasn't deleted anything in years just contact them.

You can backup up your email to your PC using POP3. Too late for you, of course, but well worth doing even if only to give you a source of archive email if Google goes down.

Is Eric right? They would delete every invitee's account? Where is the don't be evil motto? If one person is a problem, let's eliminate their account and everyone associated with them.

Digital Dirt:
Shouldn't you really reconsider geographically separating your backups? You are still at risk of losing everything in case of flood, fire, etc.

Sorry Bob. For those of you out there that want to backup your gmail, here are instructions: labnol.blogspot.com/2005/11/gm ...

Thank you very much for your words of encouragement/advice/constructive criticism again guys.

Joe: I seriously doubt it, but what do I know? :-)

I'm keeping my fingers crossed tightly.

What ip address do you get for gmail.com – go to a command prompt and type "nslookup gmail.com". Its a wild guess but I wonder if some malware has made gmail.com point to somewhere else on your machine (so you're not actually going to gmail....). A bit like the spyware search sites do. If so, check your lmhosts file...

Sorry, but I can't feel much sympathy for this guy.

Trusting someone else with your data is a recipe for disaster. Pure and simple. If you don't back up your OWN DATA, you have no footing from which to complain when that data gets lost.

Moreover, storage space these days is so unbelievably CHEAP. It would have taken this guy what, two minutes to burn all these emails onto a CD that cost him a dime.

This story has been posted on digg.com here:
digg.com/links/GMail_Horror_St ...

Hopefully this will get some more attention for you.

Shoulda hadda back-up. End of story

Sparky: Thanks for the suggestion. I'm positive I'm accessing the authentic gmail website.

It *is* possible to delete your own Gmail account. Go to "Settings" then "Accounts", there's a link on the left side "Delete All Account Info" and "Delete Gmail Service".

Someone may have gotten your password?

I'm gonna make a pop backup of my email today, Gmail is also my primary account.

That's why it's good practice to "backup" your Gmail account. Use any decent POP3 email client on your home or work PC such as Outlook or Thunderbird to periodically download all new Gmail messages. You will then have a parallel offline backup should you lose your Gmail account.

For example, I have an old, seldom-used PC that is always running Thunderbird. Twice per day, it downloads any new email. (You really don't need to set it any more frequent, because most prople only get a handful of emails per day, so twice should be sufficient.) Every week or two, I then go into Thunderbird, mark all the messages in the Inbox as read, and then I move them all to a folder. I then periodically backup the folder. The net result is that if my Gmail account gets deleted, sure, I'll be pissed, but I will always have a FULL backup of all of my email that's no more than 12 hours old.

The only caveat is that I don't think it backs up "sent" email...

-Jim

For awhile I used to use the POP3 feature to archive my gmail on my own Computers. It's getting to be a lot of email to back up now and.. it might be an interesting service to have a Trusted Third PArty to do Gmail Backup for you.. Philipp, does this sound like a possible project that might do well? It sounds like one to me. For $2-3/month. Or maybe for free it could back up your gmail.

Do you think this has anything to do with your post on Feb 27?

blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-0 ...

Heh...

I use gmail as my primary address, and I have a few backup gmail accounts as well. I don't have anything critical in my email, most of it is sentimental value (photos of family, friends, emails from and to family, etc), the most important thing I have in there are phone numbers, email addresses and rl addresses of friends and family. If my gmail account goes poof, I'd be pissed, but in the end I'd get over it.

That said, I was reading with interest about Google's supposed storage service alluded to in a powerpoint presentation a few days ago. I might look less favourably on it if what happened to Bob goes unanswered and unsolved.

And to those who keep saying it's a BETA... duh, almost everything Google has going is a BETA. Thanks for that, Captains Obvious. Beta does not mean they can ignore problems... Beta is supposed to be a testing period, where problems are to be discovered and solved.

RobM: Thanks for highlighting that. I just discovered it too not too long ago.

If that was indeed the case, well, I've still learnt my lesson. And I harbour some hopes of Google being able to assist me.

Looks like backing up via pop3 is a decent solution which we should strongly consider, especially if we use o