Imagine loading Gmail and noticing that all your messages have been deleted. This is a real problem for many Gmail users who thought that they lost all of their messages. Here’s one of the many reports from Gmail’s forum:
Yes, whatever the error is on Google’s end (and it clearly is that, not a hack, unless it’s some kind of inside hack) it’s basically reset my account so it’s like a brand-new Gmail account. My contacts are intact, but nothing else–the folders have reset to default, my signature line is blank, the “theme” is changed back to the default and–of course–every single email from the last 7 years has vanished completely.
The Google Apps Status page mentions that “this issue affects less than 0.08% of the Google Mail userbase” and “Google engineers are working to restore full access”. The users that are affected “will be temporarily unable to sign in”.
This is a really important problem for Google and one of the biggest Gmail issues ever since Google’s email service was released, back in 2004.
Update: A Google engineer says that the “accounts that are affected are currently fully disabled. We’re in the process of changing this to be a Gmail only disable so you should regain access to other Google services soon. This will also mean email to these accounts stops bouncing and gets queued up for later delivery instead.”
{ via Engadget }
