Google 'loses' thousands of Gmail users' data

The Gadget Show  Tuesday 01 March 2011

It hasn't been the best week so far for some Gmail users

Nearly 40,000 Gmail users woke up yesterday morning to find their email accounts had been wiped clean by a mystery bug on the internet giant’s servers.

The affected users were able to log into their accounts as normal, but when they did were greeted by a completely empty inbox and contacts list, and even received a welcome message from Google as if the account was brand new.

Initially, up to 150,000 users were thought to be affected, but Google revised the count downwards later yesterday to 0.02 per cent of all users, or around 38,000 in total.

That won’t be much consolation to anyone whose entire email history has vanished into thin air, and Google has been quick to reassure those affected that the data would be restored from its backup servers as quickly as possible.

“The good news is that email was never lost and we’ve restored access for many of those affected,” a Google blog post reported. “Though it may take longer than we originally expected, we’re making good progress and things should be back to normal for everyone soon.”

Apparently the issue was caused by an internal software update, which was rolled back as soon as vital data started going AWOL.

Have you been affected by the Gmail outage? If so, let us know how your thoughts in the comments below.