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Disappearing eMail -- Karl Rove, Is That You?

By grrlscientist on November 15, 2007.

Do you use gmail as your primary (or only) email server? Well, you'd better be careful because several dozen gmail users per month have been experiencing problems recently -- problems such as mysteriously losing some, most or all their email messages.

What does Google have to say about this?

According to a Google spokesman, as far as Google is concerned, "most issues like this are a result of phishing attacks or compromised passwords -- or sometimes simply messages mistakenly deleted or marked as spam -- not a data corruption issue."

But unfortunately, the missing email problems at Google are increasing; especially since July of this year. The worst part of this problem is that Google doesn't have anyone who can be contacted when such a problem occurs, and they respond to complaints with a canned email message claiming that Google determined that the problem wasn't due to a technical issue with Google systems and admonishing the complainer that s/he should change her/his Gmail password. [story].

Perhaps that was a typo on their part? Perhaps they meant that the complainer should change her/his email server?

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I'd much rather Google lose some of my stored mail than that they keep it indefinitely even after I've deleted it, which was their policy in the past.
Still, for anything moderately important, I'll rely on my own mail server. And, of course, encryption.