Comments on: Hotmail incinerates customer files

The incident underscores the dangers of online file storage as companies begin to promote free 1GB e-mail services.

[E B]

And they wonder why "renting" software never takes off...

This data loss brought to you by the company who was betting that we'd all want to "rent" all our software from them, using online versions of Word and Excel and everything else. Yet they continue to scratch their heads, wondering why the public doesn't trust the concept.

Online storage is great -- I use it myself to make easy web pages for photos. But it's not the only place I store ANYTHING -- I want it on a computer that's under my control, or copied to a CD or DVD that *I* can take responsibility for. People who are willing to trust some huge company to safeguard their information (for FREE) are asking for problems...which doesn't make it any easier when it comes.

Free online storage

If you do a follow up article, may want to mention yahoo.com's briefcase offers 30 mb free online storage.

[gmada]

Same thing happened to me!

I too lost all my hotmail files last November 2003. I logged in one day and every email was missing except for the folders. I called MSN and they were sorry, but they were unable to restore my lost e-mails as they appear to have been permanantly deleted from their servers due to the technical problem they experienced. The difference between me and the person in the article, I purchased their 10MB extra storage option. I am a paying customer. Once again, they were sorry and stated they do not maintain any back log of deleted mails from Hotmail accounts. They assumed I deleted all my mail, but left the empty folders.

Paying customer had the same bad experience

I bought the 10Mb storage option. Repeated attempts to contact MS through phone and e-mail resulted only in irritation, which was only slightly offset by the creative use of English.

Here's a sample:

Hi Corry,

I understand your frustratoin regarding the e-mails that were lost from your Hotmail account ([e-mail])., I see that you've used our service for 2+ years. Durring that time frame you've had one troublehshooting tickit logged with us. Unfortunately from time to time things happen. If you take a look at the terms of use agreement that you ok'd when you signed up with hotmail you'll see that we are not responsible for any monitary loss associated with using hotmail and considering you've had two years of service with this one issue I don't see grounds for a refund and listed in the agreement with MSN Hotmail Extra storage is a notice that the fee is non-refundable.

Thank you
MSN Billing.

[Riphly]

And I'll bet there are thousands more of us!

I logged on to my Hotmail accoun t and thought I'd check some
health site messages I had stored there - all gone.
Now for those of you who are interested, I didn't get burned so
badly because I had forwarded from my Hotmail account to my
regular account (where messages are stored on my computer) all
important messages, business and personal.
Yes, it can fill up your computer if you don't spend a little time
transferring text messages to M Works or Apple Works and filing
them on CD-rw or DVD-rw. But if you spend the moments
forwarding and filing, you lose nothing.
In any event, you pay one way or another for what seems free.

Me Too! - Dallas, Texas

MSN/Hotmail lost my critical emails as well...and I had PURCHASED 10MB extra storage...

So the reader who complained that we were fools about trusting a free service is full of BUNK.

Go ahead and get off hotmail. You'll get SPAMMED

Journalist Seeking Details

Hello...
I am a producer with a national television news syndication company. We produce television segments that air within the local newscasts nationwide. I am working on a story about the loss of stored email. I would like to talk with you about your experience and see if you might be interested in participating in the story. You can reach me via email at [e-mail] Thanks
Marisa Toccin

Heading is misleading

The heading, and other intro blurbs about this story are
misleading. They suggest that lots of people have lost files on
Hotmail, when in fact only one person has reported anything
lost.

3 different individuals had this problem

see above comments-- obviously there are more of us out there. MS needs to address this properly!

[grey_eminence]

Hotmail is a JOKE, You PAY for a real email account.

anybody using Hotmail is asking for trouble !

[Gerald Quaglia]

Hotmail good for spam

I use hotmail whenever I order something or post in newgroups.
This way all the spam goes to that account, while me real email
is used for friends and family.

Looking for real security?

The free web based services offered by the lost leaders do not provide any security... https://www.safe-mail.net is the only true web based full featured secure email and data security service available.....

Personal backup still a joke

I'll agree with the sub-point of this article that backup is increasingly important. The real problem I find with this is there is not a very cost effective solution for home users in this field. IBackup could be great if your talking about small doses of data. But when your storage needs are easier mesured in the terabyte relm your up the creek (and yes a lot of that is stick but even just getting that inital backup would be a crippling venture).

hotmail loses mail

this is certainly not an isolated event as they are claiming. i lost two hotmail accounts (with years of messages) in the same time frame.

Journalist Seeking Details

Hello...
I am a producer with a national television news syndication company. We produce television segments that air within the local newscasts nationwide. I am working on a story about the loss of stored email. I would like to talk with you about your experience and see if you might be interested in participating in the story. You can reach me via email at [e-mail] Thanks and I'll look foward to speaking with you,
Marisa Toccin

[Riphly]

And I'll Bet There Are Thousands Of Us! (Solution!)

And I'll bet there are thousands more of us!

Posted by: Robert Healey

Posted on: June 4, 2004, 7:58 AM PDT

Story: Hotmail incinerates customer files

I logged on to my Hotmail accoun t and thought I'd check some
health site messages I had stored there - all gone.
Now for those of you who are interested, I didn't get burned so
badly because I had forwarded from my Hotmail account to my
regular account (where messages are stored on my computer) all
important messages, business and personal.
Yes, it can fill up your computer if you don't spend a little time
transferring text messages to M Works or Apple Works and filing
them on CD-rw or DVD-rw. But if you spend the moments
forwarding and filing, you lose nothing.
In any event, you pay one way or another for what seems free.

[cobbie]

Drop The Service

Just a comment: If a Mail Service(any service)loses your mail NO MATTER WHAT THE REASON....why would you continue using that service .....If you do, that service really dosent have worry about the oopie's does it....Lose your messages from the the same service twice....Severs You Right ..if enough people drop the service, maybe they will more apt to care.

[TJWJ]

You Get What You Pay For

No one is buying anything to get a hotmail acct so can they really be called consumers? Anyone that puts valuable info solely in a product they have no control over should take their licks, berate themselves for being that dumb and learn from their mistake. Lest we forget, your essentially handing your prized documents over to Microsoft for safe keeping. Enough said?

[treet007]

Waaah! You get what you paid for...

I never, ever count on any external entity to save my valuable data, photos, etc. unless I signed up (and pay for) storage service, and that I know they have a service level agreement to be able to restore the data. Whether it is HOTMAIL.COM, JUNO, YAHOO! MAIL, Google, etc, any free or low cost e-mail service is just an Internet message delivery system, not a personal storage system.

Learn to backup your data on your own. Only you can make a difference...

--GIF

[tttaff]

Duh...

I have to agree with you, GF. I just cannot believe that someone would entrust a year's worth of personal and business e-mails to Hotmail. Geez, get a real email account, will ya? And do some backups, if that stuff is that important to you. And for those that use Hotmail, YAHOO, AOL, or any other such service for business e-mail, I'd have a good chuckle if someone with an email adress of '[e-mail]' sent me a business e-mail - get serious! It's like showing up for an important job interview in shorts and a tee-shirt.

TT

[Atmos42]

I agree.

I have several hotmail accounts for the portability, but I pull everything down for backup with Thunderbird. The idea of storing anything permanantly "out there" on the Net is laughable.

[CmdCrane]

backup is essential

After 20 years working in government, I find the excuse that "stuff happens" after loosing customer files is shocking. Large computer centers have long-established, working backup systems. "Oops" is not an excuse, it is only bad management. If government lost customer files for all Medicare accounts, the sky would fall! This is a case of greed compromising indrusty standard computer operations policies.

[Cirick]

Same thing happened to me.

It has only been happening recently. I just now had 4 dissappear in about 10 mins after receiving. I was in the middle of opening them when they dissappeared.
Sometimes there will be a whole month in the middle of my emails missing. I have learned to copy any incoming important mail to another folder out of hotmail in my outlook bar.
That is if I get a chance to read it. They were so good for so many years, don't know what is going on lately.

[Fray9]

Profit margin

What happened is that Microsoft trimmed or completely removed their backup systems and policies in order to try and offset a shrinking profit.

I too have lost my entire account but like others I learned long ago not to trust important information to someone elses server.

Journalist Seeking Details

Hello...
I am a producer with a national television news syndication company. We produce television segments that air within the local newscasts nationwide. I am working on a story about the loss of stored email. I would like to talk with you about your experience and see if you might be interested in participating in the story. You can reach me via email at [e-mail] Thanks and I'll look foward to speaking with you,
Marisa Toccin

[rbryan]

Hotmail issues? Oh well...

Listen, as much as it pains me to defend M$, the Hotmail account is free (even though I pay for the extra features). The incredible volume of spam and worse is reliably filtered, the account affords me some anonymous place for fluffy stuff I do, and it allows me the net passport. Hey, for the gazillion of users, Hotmail is still the best freebie out there. Want security? Get a real email acccount. And THOSE aren't foolproof. Backup, backup, backup....

[davejyd]

Save it to your hard drive!

I, too have used Hotmail, MSN, and a plethora of other "free" e-mail services to correspond with others, and file storage used to be an issue to me, too. I started saving the files to my local hard drive - It benefitted me 2 ways - I didn't have to worry about file loss (unless MY hard drive crashed - which has happened!) and it allowed me to access the files without having to log on to the service to read them. This way, if their files crash, or they go out of business, or I "exceed my limit", I don't have to worry, as I have my files on hand. It works!

Deleted hotmail from time limit

Hotmail very inconsierately deleted all my mil and prompted me
to follow new guidelines in order to "keep" my free account. Is
Hotmail going through puberty blues, as I am also finding it
ludecrously hard to create a new account for a friend of mine
and there are no links to do this- only passport. What is going
on?
I only use hotmail as a MSN Messenger facilitator and as
website ID instead of my business account with .mac. I thought
it was very harsh to delete these files as there were some
sentimental letters from years back- I can live without them but
now I must visit hotmail every 10 days for three months. I can
understand trying to clean up their system, but this is absurd
and unwarranted. Are Microsoft going to disband Hotmail? Is
this why I cant find an easy way to get a new account up?

[diafel1]

This was not limited to just a few customers

All mine files are gone as well. I had over 5 years of stuff saved. I only use my hotmail periodically, but even so, I had important things saved in there from over the years.
The ONLY upside is that the THOUSANDS of junk mail that filled my inbox and that have become the bane of hotmail(which is what drove me to use it less and less, incidentally) are miraculously gone. How long before it comes back?
I think they should have fixed the junk mail problem rather that "fix" hotmail - which WASN'T BROKEN!!!

[mnzs]

The Hotmail practice of losing / wiping off customer emails is still happening today (July 2008).
As late as a couple of weeks ago, all my emails, (some dating from 10-12 years ago) were all there.
A couple of days ago, however, I discovered that most of them have -simply- disappeared/vanished/been incinerated (you choose word).
What was most deplorable though was that the Hotmail Support team was putting the blame on me by suggesting and taking it for granted that I deleted my emails myself.
Obviously, apart from ridiculous, I find their arrogance and disrespect as most disturbing.