GMail

「GMailのアカウントがある日突然消えちゃった！」という話が、ここ数日、盛り上がっています。Googleがやっているとはいえ、所詮ベータ版。いつ消えても大丈夫なように、ちゃんとバックはしておきましょうね、みなさん。

GMail Horror Story!

I'm a regular reader of Google Blogoscoped, and yesterday, I experienced a huge shock with regards to my GMail account.

I was able to check my GMail account and emails fine at work.

However just an hour later, when I reached home and attempted to access gmail.com, I was greeted by a "Server Error" as follows:

Server Error

We're sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable. We're currently working to fix the problem – please try logging in to your account in a few minutes.

Fine, I thought – just a small hiccup which the Google folks are working on. Over the next couple of hours I attempted to login every 15 minutes or so but to no avail. By then it was past midnight and I needed to catch up on some sleep, so I decided to head to bed and hoped that things would be resolved by the next morning (i.e. today).

I woke up earlier today, and unfortunately my expectations were dashed. By then I sensed that something was terribly wrong, as the Google folks rarely took > 12 hours to fix such a problem. I accessed the Google Accounts page (www.google.com/accounts/), and saw the following message:

The account you attempted to access has been deleted. You may click here to sign up for a new account.

A nightmare come true?! I tried logging into my Google Account via www.google.com/accounts/Login but was presented with an invalid username/password error.

I tried to reset my password, and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw the following:

There are no accounts in our system with the E-mail address usermame[put at-character here]gmail.com which you entered.

Has my Google account really been deleted? I use it religiously and it is my primary email account. I have over 300mb of CRUCIAL data in my email, none of which I have backups for.

I tried to send an email to my GMail account from another email account, but the email bounced.

Any ideas as to what I should do? This is an emergency for me. :/
GMail Horror Story! - Google Blogoscoped Forum