There was once a time when Gmail could do no wrong, until a massive bug hit the big G and lost a load of Gmail data leaving users with empty inboxes.
Despite the winging and moaning that Google haters predictably rattled out, the truth is the thousands of users affected were a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of people who use Gmail as their email client.
Google did well. They didn't pull an Apple and plead ignorance, or spend ages working on a fix. They just got on with it and quickly restored the accounts of its affected users.
Or at least the majority of them.
Google has just admitted that there are still some who don’t have access to any of their old e-mails. Google is now asking users affected by the glitch to contact it directly, because from there it can simply pull the backup file and restore the account manually.
This bug could easily be forgotten but should we not take notice? Experts have highlighted that the bug was unique because not only did it wipe out data from Gmail’s main server, but it also cleared it out of online backup servers as well. If a bug has the potential to knock out our emails and their back-up, then our precious messages are in peril of being lost forever at any moment. There's no doubt Google will make changes after the small-scale fiasco, but is it not about time we started backing up our emails ourselves? Especially those with sentimental emails or important business emails.
Luckily there’s a few ways you can safely back up your Gmail. Firstly there’s Desktop clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. But if you can’t be bothered with all the hassle a free and very easy method is to transfer your Gmail over to Hotmail. The Hotmail ‘TrueSwitch’ service will do it all for you.
Plus, it doesn’t help for old emails but if you are worried about losing any future mail, then think about having Gmail forward messages to another account. Business users may also want to think about a service such as BackUpMyMail which does what it says on the tin, but at a cost.
Have any of you guys ever lost an important email? Share your story below.