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 | JoelC707Premium
join:2002-07-09
Stone Mountain, GA
kudos:4 | Re: Should've already been there... Yes the safeguards should have already been there. In fact I'm willing to bet they were and they are either just too lazy to retrieve the tapes or they will cite something like "the backups were too old" or "we couldn't read the tapes"  .
I partially disagree with your comment about not using Outlook and using web based email only. Do you think this would have been any different had you use Charter's web email vs Outlook? This could have easily happened to Yahoo or Google as well (if they were stupid enough to not have backups in place anyway. At least if you use Outlook and have it set to automatically retrieve email you would have a copy of the email on your computer already. Sure you might have missed some email that hadn't gotten downloaded yet but once it is on your computer who cares what happens to Charter's email servers. They could have lost all your email but because you used Outlook (or any other program like Eudora for example) it now resides on your computer not theirs.
Since you use web based email only, how do you make a backup of your important email? The only way I would consider something backed up from a webmail system is if I had a copy on my computer or on a removable disk. If you just move it to a "safe" folder on your webmail server it is still susceptible to problems like this. But regardless, I only use my Comcast email for things that I don't care if I lose like newsletters and such. For important things I have my own domain and run my own Exchange server so it is entirely under my control. Granted most people don't have the know how or need to run their own email server but at the very least having your own domain (or an account with someone other than your ISP) is wise so that if nothing else you can take your email address with you if you change ISP's. | |
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| Chair
join:2002-04-08
San Francisco, CA | lol, did you read the original post? Outlook would have PREVENTED most of the important data to be lost...
The data that was lost was on their servers, not yours. If you used outlook, data loss would only be on the emails during the last update, which for me is 5 minutes. | |
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| |  CheesePremium
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL
kudos:1 | Re: Should've already been there... said by Chair:lol, did you read the original post? Outlook would have PREVENTED most of the important data to be lost... The data that was lost was on their servers, not yours. If you used outlook, data loss would only be on the emails during the last update, which for me is 5 minutes. No, it wouldn't have, not if the user hadn't opened up OUTLOOK to download those emails. If they hadn't they are out of luck. | |
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| | | | | Re: Should've already been there... Uhm, did you even read what you replied to? The guy the only loss would have been on e-mails since the last update/download, which is exactly what you're referring to.
This is a primary reason why I don't use webmail. Everything is download to Thunderbird and backed up accordingly. My client is also set to check for e-mail every minute and my PC is generally on 24x7. | |
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| fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | If you use web-only email, you stand a much greater risk of losing email over having a pop and local copy of your own. Loose your email box, you still have your local mail store.. just one more line of defense of lost email. I've got the same PST store running since 1998 and haven't lost a piece of email since. However, I stand more risk of losing web based email due to the fact that I have zero control over what they do with my data. | |
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|  KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
 ·AT&T DSL Service
| said by Chris 313:"safeguards are being put in place to help prevent this type of issue from happening again." Read: We fired the guy who pressed delete. | |
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|  TzaleProud Libertarian ConservativePremium
join:2004-01-06
NYC Metro | said by Chris 313:"safeguards are being put in place to help prevent this type of issue from happening again." Any safeguards to prevent data loss like this should've already been in place. But then who uses the company email for really important stuff? I wouldn't. I use web only. Haven't used Outlook in years. Haven't lost an email yet and have backups of my really important messages. Exactly.
ISP mail = shit.
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Neoconservatives (G.W.B) are not real conservatives. A conservative believes in defending the Constitution. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - RON PAUL 2008 »www.usconstitution.net/const.html
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1 edit | No issues here No issues here and I use the old pop.chartermi.net also. Use the standard pop.charter.net one too. Didn't lose anything anywhere!
Don't know if has anything to do with it or not, but judging from the Charter forum, it looks like people using mail.charter.net, got more affected.
Don't save messages anyway, either!
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The Firefox alternative.
»www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/ | |
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1 edit | HOLY CRAP My Mom has charter, and she told me about this a couple days ago. Unfortunately they were telling her that she would be able to retrieve her mail eventually. I hope she gets at least a month of free service for this.
Completely Unacceptable | |
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|  jeffro
join:2007-04-20
Bay City, MI | Re: HOLY CRAP I lost my email as well. I'm jumping ship to u-verse as soon as it's available. This is the last straw. | |
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| | | | Re: HOLY CRAP My Mom lives in Saginasty, I'll have to tell her to watch for u-verse if it becomes available there. Are they actually rolling it out in Michigan though? I thought that was such a economically dead region that it would be the last to get any new offerings from a Telco. | |
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| | | | | Re: HOLY CRAP aint happening, I work for Charter and We own the area! | |
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| | | | This is why you don't depend on your email from your ISP. | |
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| | | Probably not. Email usually isn't a line item on the bill, so they won't issue a credit for it.
Although with an issue this big, they might offer something.
Don't hold your breath for it. | |
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| | Routine maintenance monster I hate the routine maintenance monster. He's a bastard. | |
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Reviews:
 ·Cogeco Cable
| How does this happen? Is it really possible that an ISP wasn't backing up it's customer data? I mean to say I know its possible but this is the most BASIC MISTAKE a service provider could make.
Any system rollout should include a means of backup/restore/disaster recovery as part of the project. The recent string of issues in the ISP world really has me concerned about the compentency of their IT managers. | |
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| jeffro
join:2007-04-20
Bay City, MI | Re: How does this happen? U-verse is already available in Michigan. it's avai;able in Detroit and Ann Arbor and other surrounding location. Check for it here: www.uverse.att.com. When it pops up here in Holland, which i hear now is in April, I'm gone from Charter forever. "F" this noise man. I'm sick of it. | |
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| | | Yes it's possible. There are humans involved so it's possible that someone could make a mistake.
Heh Maybe 80% of the deleted emails were probably spam. | |
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| | Reviews:
·Charter
| Re: How does this happen? said by battleop:Yes it's possible. There are humans involved so it's possible that someone could make a mistake. Heh Maybe 80% of the deleted emails were probably spam. Charter has very good anti-spam stuff, I've never got any spam from charter address. | |
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| | | | | Charter doing what it does best Guys,
Its just charter doing what they love to do Best. Screw something up!. Dslreports should start posting news of charter only when they do something right.
Charter has a good spam filter? Yeah, And moby dick was a minnow. | |
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| | |  DHRacerFire Survivor
join:2000-10-10
Lake Arrowhead, CA
·Charter
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: How does this happen? You might not have gotten spam from a charter address which means Charter is good at keeping it from coming out of their network, but they suck at spam filtering coming in, or rampaging around inside their network.
I have one address that I made, that I've never even used, and all it gets is spam, and lots of it. I just keep logging into the webmail client and reporting the entire contents of the inbox as spam, in hopes of ever seeing it diminish.
Charter's spam methods suck compared to the VZ email I had once.
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"No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them." (R&D Supervisor, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing /3M Corp.) | |
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| | | |  msmisfit
join:2004-09-13
Lawrenceville, GA
kudos:1 | Re: How does this happen? said by DHRacer:I have one address that I made, that I've never even used, and all it gets is spam, and lots of it. Sounds like you're using an address that someone else once had, who had left their address all over the net. That happens sometimes. I'd just change my address.
I got one piece of spam at my Charter address all of last year, and it said "Hello, I'm using my iPhone to send this." 
The only time I got a flurry of spam was when they were *changing over* their filtering system, a couple of years ago. It only lasted a couple of weeks. I think Charter does a great job now of stopping spam, since I get none. [knock on wood] | |
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| | | | | Maybe not FROM a Charter address... but that doesn't mean that a Charter address won't receive spam! I should know... I used to work there. | |
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| | | Backing up data is expensive. I'm sure they back up the stuff that would be needed to recover from a disaster, but the contents of customers email accounts are probably not high on the list. | |
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| | | | Re: How does this happen? said by asdfghjklzx5:Backing up data is expensive. I'm sure they back up the stuff that would be needed to recover from a disaster, but the contents of customers email accounts are probably not high on the list. I would amend your statement to include not high on the list unless the NSA wants it. | |
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| | Are you kidding me? How can a company call itself reputable and not have a backup system? The routine maintenance monster? Don't try and inject humour into this, its not funny, what Charter did was very bad. It just adds to the long list of frustrations me and my family and friends have had with this stupid company and to call the list of 14000 people affected a small number. What???? Why are we letting them get away with rude customer service and just shrugging our shoulders? Its unfortunate, in my community they have us by the balls, they are the only high speed company available. DSL just doesnt cut it.  | |
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| | BS I call BS. Routers don't store email, they route packets. Email is stored on disks. If they "lost" email that means they had a hardware problem completely unrelated to the router. Charter isn't telling you what really happened. | |
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| | | Re: BS said by steve case :
I call BS. Routers don't store email, they route packets. Email is stored on disks. If they "lost" email that means they had a hardware problem completely unrelated to the router. Charter isn't telling you what really happened.
You are correct on the router part of your statement.
But you are incorrect that a hardware problem had to occur to lose emails/files. A software maintenance routine to back up and then delete email from primary disk storage could malfunction and end up only doing the delete part. Software is written by humans and they do screw up - on a regular basis.
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Internet News
My BLOG
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|  coastjamPremium
join:2001-03-05
Atascadero, CA | Charter never tells you what really happened.
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AH-1W SuperCobra its a Hellfire of a ride... | |
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| | no backup? seems awfully strange that there are no backups of the email. either charter is a really crappy company and pretty stupid or the writer is putting some highly opinionated and speculatory BS in the news post, not sure which though.
i'd like to hear from charter on what happened. if it was just maintenance, i bet someone lost their job. there are too many unknowns right now. does charter have multiple duplicate data centers? they are using RAID, right? and more. | |
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| | | Re: no backup? RAID is not backup. RAID only provides fault tolerance in the event of a drive failure and perhaps some performance gains depending on the setup.
Backups aren't fool proof either. If there is no testing of recovery you could be backing up thinking you can restore but when the excrement hits the fan then there could be the realization that the backups failed too. Either way this sort of thing happens but is usually a result of poor planning, poor management, and poor disaster recovery plans. I suspect their Risk Management team is doing some spin control for the public and insurers, not to mention how they may have to deal with legal issues as a result of ongoing warrants or investigations. | |
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| |  RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY | Re: no backup? said by Pictor Guy:RAID is not backup. RAID only provides fault tolerance in the event of a drive failure and perhaps some performance gains depending on the setup. Some RAID configurations can be set as backups. The way it works is that the configuration of duplicates is such that the data is recorded 3 times (on 3 separate drives in the RAID complex). You disconnect the drives that comprise one full image from the RAID Complex and access it as separate image for your backup run [ie: It is a snapshot as-of the time of disconnect]). Once the backup run completes, you reconnect the drives to the RAID complex and it will update them as if you just HOT SWAPed an empty drive. The problem with doing backups is that you need to freeze the drive during the backup so you do not get an in-fight change as you do the backup. | |
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| | | | | Re: no backup? said by RARPSL:Some RAID configurations can be set as backups. The way it works is that the configuration of duplicates is such that the data is recorded 3 times (on 3 separate drives in the RAID complex). You disconnect the drives that comprise one full image from the RAID Complex and access it as separate image for your backup run [ie: It is a snapshot as-of the time of disconnect]). that's just one method (and these days, one of the more costly/wasteful methods). plus, you only have one fallback position so what interval do you take it? hourly? daily? the RPO/RTO demands will dictate this period, along with the capabilities of the technology used.
honest-to-god snapshotting (say, netapp's snapshot or emc timefinder/snap) can do this kind of thing better.. but it's more technical, depends on a lot more pieces working correctly and has its own impacts on response/service levels.
if i had to bet money, charter does back this up. the failure simply happened in the window between backups, the loss was irrevocable. think what happens when your backups run at 8PM and your disk fails 7:59PM. life sucks. any company faces this risk. it simply depends on how much value is placed on the data and the risk if data is lost. being email, the value is low and the risk is negligible. | |
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|  rawWar EaglePremium
join:2001-01-17
Madison, AL | said by cornelius785:seems awfully strange that there are no backups of the email. either charter is a really crappy company and pretty stupid or the writer is putting some highly opinionated and speculatory BS in the news post, not sure which though. As a dissatisfied customer, I'd be more than willing to put my money on the former. | |
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 TransmasterDon't Blame Me I Voted For Bill and Opus
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY
3 edits | G mail With G Mail why would anyone want to use anything else. My storage space is currently 6.3gig's. The account is free paid for by closely targeted ad's some of which I have accually purchased stuff from. Yes I have my MSN account, and My Yahoomail spam, and junk mail account. But I mostly use Gmail. Yes I do have outlook at work but that's all.
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Eat pork chops for Allah! | |
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| | | Re: G mail Well, GMail has it's own quirks that aren't always great: you can't delete from the server using a POP client, you can't retrieve from more than one POP client, and you can't create folders (the labels kinda suck). If you're strictly a web-based user you're in great shape. If you like your outlook or thunderbird to keep remote copies of your mail (for cases just like this one), it's a bit difficult to tangle with. | |
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| | TransmasterDon't Blame Me I Voted For Bill and Opus
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY
1 edit | Re: G mail Well yes there is that. I can't use conventional email for what I do at work, only encrypted outlook. I am a medical records administrator so everything I deal with is very, very private, Most of the time even with encrypted e-mail I don't trust it so much of what I do I hand deliver with in the Hospital. Other then this all of my other e mail use is just letter writing to friends across the planet.
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Eat pork chops for Allah! | |
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| | | | said by mlundin:Well, GMail has it's own quirks that aren't always great: you can't delete from the server using a POP client, you can't retrieve from more than one POP client, and you can't create folders (the labels kinda suck). If you're strictly a web-based user you're in great shape. If you like your outlook or thunderbird to keep remote copies of your mail (for cases just like this one), it's a bit difficult to tangle with. Not difficult anymore since gmail implemented IMAP. All my gmail is also stored locally on 2 different computers and kept in sync with gmail servers using the Windows Vista Mail program.
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Internet News
My BLOG
My Web Page | |
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bgraham
join:2001-03-15
Smithtown, NY | It was probably 99% spam anyway A new way to fight the spammers.  | |
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| Emiya
join:2006-03-30
Southington, OH | Re: It was probably 99% spam anyway And if the remaining 1% had anything worthwhile in their inbox, that's still 140 customers who lost something important. | |
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Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T DSL Service
| wait for it... Hey, as our resident Charter apologists would point out, since they're the "2007 MSO of the Year," you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, am I right?
I'm going to go ahead and guess they won't be winning back-to-back awards. Unless the MSO award was for "most sh*tty operator" instead of "multi system operator." | |
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 powerhogStinkin' up the jointPremium
join:2000-12-14
Owasso, OK | Seek Outside Help Surely the CIA, FBI or even AT&T has a copy of all this e-mail somewhere that they can restore for the users- right?  | |
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 Skilos
join:2000-08-19
Astoria, NY | the feds looks likes the feds messed up in copying the database, and in turn wiped most of the emails. doh!
"Charter" "yes sir" "this never happened" "Yes sir" "As far as anyone knows this was an accident, is that understood" "yes sir all mighty powerful nerd" | |
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| | No Such Thing as "Accidental" This has to be the ISP equivalent to ejaculating in someone's mouth and saying "Oopsie! I had no idea this would ever happen...my bad." | |
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| |  Ungrateful For it's customers
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| | Uh huh Use Outlook.
Sorry folks noting is full proof,I have no sympathy.
You going to blame Maxtor cause your hard drive failed, and YOU didn't back it up? No sorry. Stop blaming others. | |
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| | | Re: Uh huh You are so Correct.
Ok people. Lets put it this way
If 14,000 users lost their email and each one only had 1mb worth of email. (Most of the time now that is 1 email due to you stupid people sending that stupid Pass along religious spam)
This is over 14,000Mb in
But how many emails do you get a day 5? 6? 7?
Ok so if half the users go 1mb email * 5 that is 5 MB * 7000
That is 35000 + 7000 = 42,000mb and that is at the low end. and that is considering that all the email boxes were checked Regularly. (Most users do not.
So really we can say in real #s the space being used is really 50,000 to 100,000mbs of space. And you want people to back up your email that they give you as a free Courtesy service to your internet access???
Wow are u people high on dog food. Down load your email back it up to cd and Stop your whining about FREE EMAIL CRASHING. | |
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| | Email Probably got mixed up with the email written by corporate officers. All traces of that are routinely deleted in big companies, so if they ever get sued there's no evidence to be found. | |
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| | Sad whan free mail is better more relilable Its crazy when free mail is better more reliable than
a payed service. The email you pay for is part of the service and just oops we suck and you email is gone.
Not like that Charter not like that. | |
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 dnoyeBFerrous Phallus
join:2000-10-09
Southfield, MI | Should have been using AT&T Then they could ask the government for a copy of their data... | |
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 PolarBear03The bear formerly known as aaron8301Premium
join:2005-01-03 | I don't know why Using ISP email is like shopping at Best Buy or Sears; everyone knows they shouldn't do it, but for some odd reason some people still do. | |
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| | | Re: I don't know why Charter doing what it does best
Guys,
Its just charter doing what they love to do Best. Screw something up!. Dslreports should start posting news of charter only when they do something right.
Charter has a good spam filter? Yeah, And moby dick was a minnow.
My take on this as a Charter employee is that this is a free service you get from Charter and if you are not satisfied with the service or the email....find another provider! Do you honestly think that someone decided it would be funny to delete these emails and raise the call volume in all of the tech centers? Wow, if you believe that one, I have got a really nifty bridge to sell you! Get real people, things happen and there is always DSL!! | |
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