This from AP in St. Louis: ISP and cable TV operator Charter Communications has deleted the contents of 14,000 customer e-mail accounts.
“We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error,” [their spokesperson] said Thursday when the company announced the gaff.
The poor folks who did find their accounts deleted will, however, get a $50 credit. Although I’m guessing some will prefer the litigation route.
AP says that Charter “gives each new Internet user a free e-mail account, but some customers opt to use other accounts instead. So every three months the company deletes inactive accounts” the spokesperson says.
And we’re talking more than 2.5 million users, in theory at least.
Bottom line: If you’ve got an online email account (i.e. not one you’re regularly downloading and storing on your computer) then you probably should think about backing that account up elsewhere.
It’s actually not easy. I have no idea how I’d back up my Gmail account. Here’s one option, using Google Groups. And if you want to back up everything to your hard drive, here’s another, using POP.
The Associated Press: Cable Co. Empties 14,000 E-Mail Accounts
Back up gmail with pretty much any modern e-mail client (Thunderbird, Outlook, iMail) using the IMAP protocol. Works great.
IMAP is great for getting mail from your email archives on your desktop into Gmail (for example, if you wanted to aggregate it into one location), but for archiving it from Gmail down to your PC, I would POP it. If you use IMAP, and Gmail deletes your online email — accidently or otherwise — then the deletions will sync with your desktop email client and and delete it all there, too.