Comments on: Gmail user gets kneecapped

By: Steve Comeau

Steve Comeau — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 18:00:51 +0000

Almost every website offering services has this disclaimer. It protects owners from being responsible when a service goes down, is deleted, etc…

If its a sold product, it would be different. Free products need to ensure they dont become liable for stuff, cause then it would cost them money when people get mad.

By: drblast33

drblast33 — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 15:05:49 +0000

Ok… I just had this done to me. My gmail account started by saying I either had wrong account name or password. I tried to restore the password, and it said that my account does not exist or hasnt been fully setup yet (Ive had gmail for over 2 years). So I went to “finish setting it up” and it said my user name is already in use! SOO… My account seems to be deleted, but I cant open that name up again! Anyone have a clue? I thought maybe someone hacked in and closed it… but why wouldnt it let me restart the service with the same name? I dont think I ever violated TOS. It was used for everyday emails!

By: one digital life » Blog Archive » Beware! Google may delete your Gmail account

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 20:55:09 +0000

[...] Do you use Gmail as your primary email account? If so, you may want to check out this article over at Hawk Wings. It tells the story of Bob, a Gmail user who unexpectedly had his Gmail account deleted… by Google… without warning. He lost everything. [...]

By: links for 2006-03-16 at Known Stranger

links for 2006-03-16 at Known Stranger — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 05:23:31 +0000

[...] Hawk Wings Â» Blog Archive Â» Gmail user gets kneecapped What ??!! (tags: News) [...]

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:31:04 +0000

@Sammy: I think that’s right. Gmail do make the risks of using its service explicit in the terms of service.

I guess the injustice arises because people — unwisely perhaps — don’t read and consider terms of service agreements as much as they should, so that an unusual or unexpected condition takes them by surprise.

Which is an enormous shame for Bob and Harry and the rest.

By: Sammy

Sammy — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 18:39:28 +0000

Although email archives are surely important to all users, Google should not be liable for backing up everyone’s personal data. Mistakes do happen from time to time. Each and every one of gmail’s users acknowledged the beta version of gmail, myself included. If I agreed to take that risk, I will not complain. If Bob wanted a more reliable service, as suggested by other people that replied to this article, Bob should’ve gone somewhere else, perhaps pay a buck or two.

Without wanting to sound like a smart #$$, please consider the following:

Beta /n :
1. Mostly working, but still under test;
2. Anything that is new and experimental;
3. Flaky; dubious; suspect (since beta software is notoriously buggy).

Let’s not expect the coffee bought at McDonalds NOT to be hot! Face the consequences.

Only in America ….

By: Trev

Trev — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 17:17:47 +0000

Well,

Simply forward a copy of all incoming email to a storage address. Gmail offers forwarding.

By: Reinier Zwitserloot

Reinier Zwitserloot — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 14:13:07 +0000

I manually talked POP to the gmail server about 4 months ago and back then it definitely spammed massive amounts of header numbers back, growing with every new mail received.

I’ll check out later what’s going on now.

By: Will

Will — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:38:16 +0000

What Reinier said is false. You will only get the new messages when doing POP. Gmail behaves differently than other servers.

“At some point youâ€™re downloading a meg just to check that you have no new mail.” That statement is easily proven wrong if watch what your reader is doing.

I used POP and the web interface when away from my machine. My only slight gripe is that reading gmail messages over pop doesn’t mark them as read in the web interface.

By: Reinier Zwitserloot

Reinier Zwitserloot — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:00:18 +0000

Don’t just ‘POP’ your gmail.

Here’s a sweet setup: Keep your mail on gmail, but also import them into mail.app. That way, you can just use mail.app at home, but gmail is both a live backup, your actual mail address, and a webmail interface for the 2 times in a year when you forgot to bring your iBook along. Okay, fine, as mac notebook user I haven’t used gmail as a form interface since I set it up, but the backup thing is still nice.

Again, do NOT just pop your gmail to do this! If you configure gmail to allow POP but to leave copies in gmail, your mail.app keeps fetching larger and larger lists every 5 minutes. At some point you’re downloading a meg just to check that you have no new mail.

Instead, create another gmail account, forward all mail from your main to this new one, and set this new gmail account to allow POP but to delete any mails that are POPped. Then point your mail.app to that gmail account’s POP. For backup purposes, pick up all gmails from your original once, using POP-but-dont-trash-messages, then turn off POP for your main account.

Works like a charm.