Charter Communications officials believe a software error during routine maintenance caused the company to delete the contents of 14,000 customer e-mail accounts. 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 gaff.
View: Full Story @ Associated Press
View: Full Story @ Associated Press
and the $50 credit to the affected accounts are more of a slap on the face then an apology
Last edited by Hell-In-A-Handbasket on 24 Jan 2008 - 22:10
time to change email providers when they dont backup their data on a DAILY basis...hardly anyone woudl have even noticed anythign was wrong if they did a restore job.......its just stupid not to backup sensitive data like that...
Charter Communications got 0wn3d!
cost for backup solution = a once of cost of approx 100k max i'd guess for a HDD backup solution for a major service provider with a LOT of data to backup 14TB woudl give all those custoemrs 1 gig each, although you coudl easily get away with half that, for a normal business i'd guess 5 K for a 1 TB solution is plenty.
money they make from customers = at least the above on probably a daily basis...
money lost by customers from lost emails $ WAY MORE...
money lost by them due to custoemrs Suing for lost emails $even more than that
damage to reputation of said cable compnay = PRICELESS
Shadow Caching
Hello Charter
www.support.microsoft.com
May need to look up your product for support options
oO never mind just call. I'll direct you to India for server support
Bwaahahahahahahahhaha
You forget the small businesses use ISPs too.
1. Don't sort critical stuff in your email.
2. Don't use Charter.
a lot of small businesses canot afford to have their own email server and seeing there ISP gives them a certain amount of free email accounts, why woudlnt they use them...
the point here is the data should have been backup up nomatter who is hosting it....do they not backup the websites their customers have on their servers..
a lot of small businesses canot afford to have their own email server and seeing there ISP gives them a certain amount of free email accounts, why woudlnt they use them...
the point here is the data should have been backup up nomatter who is hosting it....do they not backup the websites their customers have on their servers..
all email is not web based.. try pop3 or imap and if you use either of those 2 and elect to not dl messages from the server, you're a dope.
Yes, EXACTLY My Words In Flaming 30 Foot High Letters.
The Web is not The Internet.
While Web servers run on the Internet, the Internet does not run on web servers.
Therefore web based email (ie stored and only accessed from web servers) is extremely volatile this way (backup dependent on some hokey ISP).
If you are using standard SMTP/POP3 store and forward email services (notice, not web servers), you will only lose the email contained on the server when it fails. All your correspondence is saved locally in a database that you can back up religiously (Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, et. al.)
So, to reiterate, "Why web-based email stinks to high heaven. No backup. If you were using it for business, you just learned a really painful lesson. Otherwise, oops!"
I know people who have Yahoo, Hotmail (Live), Gmail, etc. accounts where all their precious family correspondence is stored on some backend database server contacted through some Web-Based email interface. When it goes south, you have no backup, no local storage of any of this stuff.
Of course for the most part, in the grand scheme of things, it's just petabytes of drivel, but if you value it, trusting some mega corporation to not cut costs and just say oops when it disappears is pretty rose-tinted glasses optomistic. Those free accounts are worth just that much.
So, if you are using one of these ISP's mail services, see if they allow POP3 access to your email and use it, or else lose it. :^(
a lot of small businesses canot afford to have their own email server and seeing there ISP gives them a certain amount of free email accounts, why woudlnt they use them...
the point here is the data should have been backup up nomatter who is hosting it....do they not backup the websites their customers have on their servers..
all email is not web based.. try pop3 or imap and if you use either of those 2 and elect to not dl messages from the server, you're a dope.
what i was tryign to say is all email is on the internet (web)... without the web you have no email...the point is that ALL email is pop3 or imap etc. the fact you use a browser rather than an email client to get it does not change the fact the email servers are just email servers, whcih shoudl be backed up....e.g. i have a web browser based client i can use when i am not near a PC with my email client configured, however i use the exact same email account in outlook which i actually use an OST rather than PST so i have my email online adn offline, encase i need access to emails when i am away from my main computer... alot of users at my work use the web based client at home and outlook in the office..
any ISP that does not backup their clients data is the dope, i expect my email provvider to backup my email...
I realize that this is a technical thing.
The INTERNET is the network that carries all the traffic. It IS NOT the web. The WEB is all that HTTP/HTTPS traffic out there that is carried on the internet, the port 80/443 stuff. As opposed the SMTP/POP3 port 25/110 stuff.
So while it may be technically true that all email is on the INTERNET, some of the EMAIL is on the web ACCESSIBLE ONLY THROUGH WEB SERVERS and most of the rest of it is accessed through SMTP/POP3/IMAP servers.
Get the separation here? Repeat after me, THE WEB IS NOT THE INTERNET, THE WEB IS A PART OF THE INTERNET.
Insert insane evil genius laughter here.
And if you are using POP3/IMAP clients, you are saving your email on your computer and you can do your own backup, instead of relying on some cheesy ISP like substance to have a brain. Saves you a lot of grief in the end.
that's why i LOVE gmail
In terms of the mistake, a lot of people are blowing it out of proportion. Just because they are a big corporation doesn't mean that things can never go wrong in any way. Hardware failures happen, data backup failure happens, a lot of crap happens. It's really too bad that those people lost their email but life goes on. Really, it does. No matter what Charter does they will have at least 1 ****ed off customer that they won't be able to satisfy.
Just goes to show you can't always rely on technology. This could have happened to any email provider or ISP regardless of the preventative measures they took.
People should know how to backup their email, but it doesn't surprise me that people don't.
Also, people shouldn't be using their ISP as their email provider. If shouldn't have to worry about telling everyone you know your new email address if you change ISPs. That is just stupid.
I use gmail and been using it for about 2 years now. I love it.
charter sucks. but I do not want DSL and I am stuck with them for now.
Just phone in and bitch a lot.
this is the way forward.
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