How do you protect yourself from a similar fate? The way I do it is by managing all of my data locally on my laptop (and of course making religious, at-least-once-daily backups of said data). I download all my email using POP3, from a VPS that I am paying for into fetchmail / procmail / mutt on my laptop. My address book is managed locally in a YAML database, and my calendar is managed using flat text files and Remind. Note that none of this precludes remote access to my data, either; I carry a copy of PuTTY on my USB drive, and with the appropriate SSH key and/or S/Key password I can access my data, securely, from anywhere in the world.

That's just one way of going about it, of course; you don't have to go all Unix-retro to achieve the same peace of mind. The theory is simple: just find a way to consolidate the master copies of your important data on machines that are physically under your control, and then make frequent backups of these machines. If possible, also make sure that you have some sort of service agreement with the servers you rely upon for email, Web service, XMPP, and so on. Yes, it is more expensive, and yes it's more difficult than just signing up for a free GMail account, but your data is worth it.

In this case I don't think anyone's terribly worried about Google not having backups or dropping off the radar tomorrow, but they pretty obviously don't care about individual customers.

That can be solved by dealing with a small to medium sized business that has real interest in keeping you as a customer. We pay all of $10 a month for the place where our email is hosted, and the customer support has always been a charm usually responding within an hour and at the longest thusfar, three hours.

Luckily, I conjured up the street number from memory as I glanced at the many building numbers on the 1700 block of K, and the company I was meeting with was listed on the matching building's directory.

That evening I connected Thunderbird with GMail (POP) and changed my settings to delete all mail from the server. I have local copies of everything with the added benefit that, theoretically, less of my email is floating around Google's server rooms.

There are, essentially, no degrees to trust. You either trust someone or you don't.

It's never a good idea to store your data in one place that someone else owns, especially when you are one of millions of users. With a free solution you're not going to get the attention you deserve.

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/09/23/caveat-emptor-dominium

This kind of thing happens all of the time. Sometimes it gets resolved, sometimes it does not. Everytime, it takes longer to fix than it should.

Google does not support any of these services you have mentioned (other than adwords). Think long and hard about this. If you rely on any of these services, this same situation could happen to you. Be prepared: Have backups and a backup plan ready just in case.

Or maybe they are trying to get people scared, so they will start paying for Gmail and similar services just to have better support (http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=...)

That's one of the many reasons we just pay $8 a month for Exchange hosting.

How do you grow to that many users and provide decent support. Tough question really.

Most of good support is eliminating the need for it I suppose.

If you use gmail as your outgoing email, then the sent emails will have a Sender: header (and return-path) of your @gmail.com address, even if you set a role.

If you search gmail for 'to: [email protected]' you'll see how much mail is bypassing your domain.

You can setup alternate e-mail addresses in Gmail and tell it to reply with the one it was sent to. It's still sent off Gmail servers, but with the Sender changed (so you just setup your SPF to allow Gmail).

> even if you set a role.

What does this mean?

I pay for the premium google apps service. I like to think the turnaround will be pretty quick if I run into any issues like this. I think it's worth it for imo the best email client and storage around with the least hassle.

I used to use oddpost (paid for that as well), but then they were swallowed by Yahoo. I can't stand Yahoo's mail. Way too cluttered for my taste.

Email is such an important application for me, day to day, that I have absolutely no problem paying google a modest yearly fee for their service. Sure there are plenty of free options out there, but I bet their support is equally dismal. Good customer support is expensive because there are a lot of whiny user's out there that also need to be supported. Pay the premium.

* the interface (discussions especially)

* the speed

* the search features (and its speed)

I suppose most of it could be recreated on top of a "regular" mail server but what would be involved?

I'm not saying that would be easy but, wouldn't that be an interesting offering? (open-source or not actually)

Phishing email:

<http://adwords.google.com/select/images/adwords_home/new_log...;

Renew Your Account Now!

Dear Member,

This is your official notification from Google Inc. that the service(s) listed below will be deactivated and deleted if not renewed immediately.

As the Primary Contact, you must renew the service(s) listed below or it will be deactivated and deleted.

Renew Now your Google AdWords services. <http://adwords.google.com.session-27120581839530682797.38412...;

SERVICE: Google AdWords EXPIRATION: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 19:12:37 +0300

Thank you for using Google Inc service. We appreciate your business and the opportunity to serve you.

Google AdWords Service .

Note : Your Google AdWords Password is NOT your Google Email password! © 2008 Google

------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. If you have any questions, please visit the Google AdWords Help Centre at https://adwords.google.com/support/?hl=en_GB to find answers to frequently asked questions and a 'contact us' link near the bottom of the page. ----------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know anything about the author, but has he done anything to enrage the G?

If this is truly just a random account disablement, then it would seem that Google needs to augment their customer support accessibility and procedures. If the author is/was somehow "competing" with Google on some level, or making anti-G remarks, I would be curious about such details.

I think there is more to this story.

Also, I've been a long time google supporter and that's why I've used so many of their products.

Even if someone did make "anti-G remarks" (Which I have not afaik), I don't think that would be reason to disable their account.

I understand your skepticism - it was exactly my response when I heard it had happened to some other people a few months ago.

Are you saying that would have been a fair reason to suspend his accounts?

At Justin.TV, one of the things I'm proud of is that we clearly communicate the things that can get your account suspended. Making "anti-Justin.TV remarks" is certainly not one of them!

Edit; knew I saw this on HN - I thought this had been resolved.

As brk said I also think there is more to this. I doubt any service with a reputation to uphold would just randomly give a block without any detail at all.

I love Google, I'm a sucker for the whole cloud concept and I think Google is the place to go for this - they're open, they're free and they're not going to go away anytime soon. I don't keep my extra confidential documents on Docs and am sensible enough to make backups - therefore I've got nothing to worry about in that respect.

It's very easy to say making backups is obvious, but how easy is it to make backups of adwords keyword lists every time you change them... Maybe your google account is a simple one with not many services in use.

As a consultant I'm regularly working on site at companies where they have everything except port 80 blocked. So IMAP, POP and (especially) SMTP are out. If you want a local copy of your mail in this situation WebDav's really the best solution.

If the answer is "Not very long" then you will have to crack open your wallet.

Cf. http://adactio.com/journal/1357

I'm not implicating the OP in any of this, but that is the most logical explanation.

Both MS and Google are all after that (so human) fact.

2) "loose" instead of "lose" -- always a bad sign

My backup email received some "password reset instructions" emails for my main google account. - eg someone clicked on [forgot my password] on google, and entered my account name.

Sorry if that wasn't crystal clear.