The unthinkable has happened. If you have a Gmail account, you might wanna go check it right now, because Google has just confirmed that as many as 500,000 Gmail users (or 0.29% of the total as per Google) have just had their accounts reset. Effectively, they have, as of now, lost a whole lotta emails, attachments, labels, folders and chat logs!
This reset, which was first reported by the Huffington Post, is apparently the result of some bug. Those affected by this unfortunate accident are now greeted with Gmail’s welcome messages, with their previous data missing. The latest update from the Google blog tells us that the Google engineers are currently working on the problem, and that the missing data should be restored asap.
Like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, this incident is truly unthinkable, for the simple reason that Google and its services are THE most reliable ones amongst all that is available. To see such kind of a horrible accident happen to Gmail, a mail service majority of the world uses, is worrying and foreboding. An accident of this nature makes it clear that even cloud computing may not keep our data reliably safe and sound. I can personally confirm that I have not been affected by this reset. What about you?
UPDATE: Google has firstly verified that the number of users actually affected was closer to 38,000, and has also restored account access of one third of those affected. The remaining two third of the affected can expect access “within 12 hours”, as per Google. Regarding the lost data however, Google reps have remained tightlipped but promised that their engineers are “working to get it restored asap.”
