DavidT Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 21+ hours since the last update. No...the update was at 10:30 am, not pm (EDT), so that would have been over 30 hours before your post, if my calculations are correct. "email support" was here browsing the forums less than an hour ago. DT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turetzsr Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 No...the update was at 10:30 am, not pm (EDT), so that would have been over 30 hours before your post, if my calculations are correct. <snip> ...But actually posted an bit of an update here, more recently 79146[/snapback]: Nov 1 2011, 07:25 PM EDT, about 26 hours ago now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luisalbondigas Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 ...Apparently at least two of us, petzl and I) do think it's on topic. You are welcome to your view that it isn't helpful but it might very well be useful to someone else, such as dahauss 79161[/snapback]), to have suggestions for avoiding losing their e-mail history when a provider has a machine failure, it's worth having here....For better or worse, the mail service is not provided by SpamCop and there isn't anything SpamCop feels that they can do about CES e-mail problems. Elsewhere, I suggested to them that the fact that SpamCop's name is on the e-mail service does cause customer unhappiness to tar them but the point apparently escaped the one with whom I was communicating and I have to presume that is the consensus there. Hey, I'm just a customer of over ten years tenure, and thousands (tens of thousands?) of spam reports. As a customer, my relationship is with SpamCop. SpamCop has a relationship with whomever they've contracted with to provide the email services which SpamCop sells. Your deep concern over who's tarred by whom is, frankly, beside the point. If this is not fixed, don't worry, the tar will be well distributed. The helpy advice on backing up with this or that is after the fact, ex post facto. Go on talking about it if you want, but it's not going to get our mail back. It would be better put in a dedicated topic, where it's accessible. But by all means, continue with the off topic comments if you feel it's somehow appropriate. Me, I'd like some direct feedback from SpamCop engineering (or whomever is engineering this) on AN ETA FOR THE FIX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petzl Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 Me, I'd like some direct feedback from SpamCop engineering (or whomever is engineering this) on AN ETA FOR THE FIX. The advice is possibly after the horse has bolted (my case no I save popped email to USB) One might consider it now, not that such events are common (A first since before last millennium). At least SpamCop email have saved yours and you will get it ASAP. This is the only email provider I have seen do this ever (most just say tough luck) There has been an update HERE AND HERE One good out come is it looks like a complete overhaul (new is better?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luisalbondigas Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 The advice is possibly after the horse has bolted (my case no I save popped email to USB) One might consider it now, not that such events are common (A first since before last millennium). At least SpamCop email have saved yours and you will get it ASAP. This is the only email provider I have seen do this ever (most just say tough luck) Really? Which commercial for-pay providers have done that? Every commercial email provider with whom I've had a customer relationship claims daily backups and restore ability. Corporate inside providers do also, of course. You know, if you are comparing the SpamCop email to free services like those offered by Yahoo and Gmail, you're comparing unlike fruit. There has been an update HERE AND HERE One good out come is it looks like a complete overhaul (new is better?) The first "update" is only a (welcome) instruction to send email to CES support with a certain subject header value. It's not an update. Content free. Not an update. More like an offer of support. The second "update" is another shock. The restore is to begin on Saturday? What? Four days from now? Wow. Well, slow pace and all, at least there's hope of getting back the data. That is a good thing. Perhaps this is gratuitous, but, you know petzl, this is a business thing. I don't think you should feel obligated to attempt defending SpamCop personnel. They are not being attacked. We, customers, just want and need to know what the heck is going on with OUR DATA. These, the SpamCop/CESMail employees are people who are working for the company of which we are customers. It is not unreasonable to ask for some updates. It's not a personal attack. Second, as this is a for-pay email service, it is not unreasonable to expect that the service will provide for proper data security and backup. It's nice to talk about local backup and the various modalities one might employ in order to achieve it, but it's beside the point. We're paying the freight here. If the annual charges are not sufficient, raise the price. But when you sell email services, there's an obligation to secure the data. This is normal in the world of selling email services. (remember, I'm not talking about freebie services, although I bet you the majors make great effort to secure the data - losing millions of customer's data, free or not, would be a huge PR disaster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregw Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 I definitely agree with luisalbondigas here. When I PAY for email service, I expect certain reliability/guarantee as to the safety of the emails in my account. In this instance, CES has certainly dropped the ball. To not have old emails available for over 4 days is completely unacceptable, especially when customers PAY FOR and rely on their service. Don't they have a contingency plan for server failure? They expected their old hardware to run forever and never fail? Like luisalbondigas said, if the annual fee isn't sufficient to support the service, then hell, raise the price. I certainly do not class CES with the free email services given by gmail or yahoo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petzl Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 I definitely agree with luisalbondigas here. When I PAY for email service, I expect certain reliability/guarantee as to the safety of the emails in my account. In this instance, CES has certainly dropped the ball. To not have old emails available for over 4 days is completely unacceptable, especially when customers PAY FOR and rely on their service. Don't they have a contingency plan for server failure? They expected their old hardware to run forever and never fail? Like luisalbondigas said, if the annual fee isn't sufficient to support the service, then hell, raise the price. I certainly do not class CES with the free email services given by gmail or yahoo. I'm in Australia the big ISP we have here is TELSTRA they have regularly lost email through outages which sometimes go on for days and they don't care at all. Gmail Yahoo Hotmail have also had their share of outages. I also pay for SpamCop email service and do not like it when it becomes unreliable and or effective (and have said so particually with the countrywide blocklists not working) So I don't disagree with you or "luisalbondigas" and most certainly feel your/our grievances need airing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
showker Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 Thanks for the update. I'm sure I'm not the only one who cares *much more* about the old mail than the new ... I would happily take a slightly more outdated *good* restore (say from a week ago) than a corrupted/incomplete... Please do what you can to keep us updated. DT Thank you David -- YES, 100% with David. Even a zip with mbox text files of the folders. I feel so stupid-- an idiot that I can't follow my own preaching over the past 25 years in my newsletters and seminars to BACK UP! Spamcop has (for me at least) NEVER lost a single email, and I was too over-confident... "It can't happen here!" Stupid me! :-( Thank you, Spamcop for doing everything you can to restore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevenUnderwood Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 I would hope they do daily full backups, then a weekly full backup and take them off site and also a monthly full backup.. were I work we do a FULL BACKUP on SUNDAY and then an incremental backup every day on different tapes. then once a month we do a monthly backup.. all tapes ar rotated and taken off site.. You expect that for $30/year? You expect a lot more than I do. I have my own archive which gets updated each time my wife or I read email from our main machine and am only missing a couple of days worth of messages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dasseattle Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 Here I thought I was being more secure when I stopped popping email down to my own PC and left everything online. Lesson learned. Email program on PC set up, now downloading and backing up email locally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luisalbondigas Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 You expect that for $30/year? You expect a lot more than I do. Yep, that's what we're paying for, and it's not an unreasonable expectation. If SpamCop can't perform proper data security, including backups at the price, raise the price. I have my own archive which gets updated each time my wife or I read email from our main machine and am only missing a couple of days worth of messages. Good for you. I also have local backups, of the stuff I've downloaded. Years of it. But the current stuff, hot inbox stuff I need to keep in front of me and list mail I want(ed) to save in subfolders, stays (or stayed) on SpamCop. Boo hoo, eh? I won't make that mistake again, but that's not the same as saying that SpamCop's data security regime is OK and fine. It's obviously not. Perhaps now it will be. I'm in Australia the big ISP we have here is TELSTRA they have regularly lost email through outages which sometimes go on for days and they don't care at all. Gmail Yahoo Hotmail have also had their share of outages. I also pay for SpamCop email service and do not like it when it becomes unreliable and or effective (and have said so particually with the countrywide blocklists not working) So I don't disagree with you or "luisalbondigas" and most certainly feel your/our grievances need airing Yes, TELSTRA's infamous reputation is certainly a base line all services should (not) aim to equal. The commercial email offerings of Yahoo and Gmail have lost customer data? Or are you speaking of the free services? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpamCop 98 Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 You expect that for $30/year? You expect a lot more than I do. I don't believe it's unreasonable to expect a paid email service to perform a daily incremental backup no matter what it costs or how you slice it. Storage media used to cost a lot more than it does now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregw Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 You expect that for $30/year? You expect a lot more than I do. I certainly DO expect that my emails will be backed up and secure when I am paying $30 for EMAIL ONLY service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
helios Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 Considering the amount of email I have on the line here, is it possible to get a clearer statement along the lines of "All the old mail is backed up and has not been lost" rather than "we are working on it"? I don't mind waiting for it to reappear, as long as I have piece of mind that it still exists. Thanks in advance for the reassurance. And yes -- I'll start backing up after this Could we please have something stating this *on the webmail login page*, please? It would save a lot of panic upon finding out that all your mail is gone from your email client, all your mail is gone when you log into webmail, so you hit the "problem" button and report it, because all you see on the login page is a scheduled outage for tomorrow, when there's quite clearly a problem now... I was googling before I even remembered we had a forum. But I thought something had happened which had caused my mail client to eat my entire folder tree, and then tell the server to get rid of it on that end, too. And being online, this is my backup, because I've lost my local copies in hard drive crashes before... And I certainly expect a servce I've been paying $30 a year for email only to not lose the email stored on their server, ie: do their job, oddly enough. Most people expect it of free email servers - there'd be mass panic and riots if Gmail did it. And it's been storing my mail nice and safe since before Gmail existed, so I don't think it's too much to expect it to continue to do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpamCop 98 Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 I never could get over the fact that Google was reading my mail... Top 13 Free POP3 Email Services and Free IMAP Email Services "We will never scan your emails for advertising purposes." http://www.gmx.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luisalbondigas Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 Top 13 Free POP3 Email Services and Free IMAP Email Services "We will never scan your emails for advertising purposes." http://www.gmx.com/ Does the paid Google Apps mail also scan your mail for datamining purposes? What does it cost now, USD$5/month now? Something like that. Last time I looked (stupid me for only looking), they also promised backup as part of the service. Not that I'm suggesting that we evacuate our reliable, independent, and security minded email provider here, even if only two of those are now valid. Let's hope that, sometime during or after the restore process, some clear statement about data security is forthcoming, so we can once again have faith in all three. So far, while I sympathize with what is now obviously a difficult resource position of the techs on the front line here (really, I'm glad it's not me sweating in the colo center today), I don't know what to think about what's happened. I mean, what's due diligence here, now? Does each customer have to figure out a local backup, or find some other cloud volume and figure out how to backup to it? What about the IMAP auto-wipe at synch phenomenon? Up to now, I regularly moved server resident mail to local, and regularly backed that up through MozBackup for TBird/FFox, as well as drive images, AND file x file increments to segregated drives. Now I see that this does not offer sufficient security for that mail out on the provider server(s); at least, not in this case. Stupid me for trusting the valuable but not vital list mail out on the provider servers, and more stupid for treating the main Inbox as my real Inbox, leaving important messages there at the top of the info hierarchy to remind me to deal with it. But, really, is this a case of stupid customer behavior? I don't think so. It is not unreasonable to expect data security from a provider; even a free provider. I mean, these are just good practices. Sorry rambling. Just like the heroic techs struggling to fix this now, I too didn't need this complication now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpamCop 98 Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 I too didn't need this complication now. This is a work day for my several clients and roles. I, too, was curious why this was timed as so not to disturb our users in Hong Kong, Beijing or Perth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petzl Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Does the paid Google Apps mail also scan your mail for datamining purposes? What does it cost now, USD$5/month now? Something like that. Last time I looked (stupid me for only looking), they also promised backup as part of the service. I used to use "The Bat Voyager" as a USB email Client, It has secure password requirement to open it. They for a payment of US$45 for program, also give a Google hosted email address; 'username at "TheBat.net" I used my own USB. When my email gets over 2 gig in size I zip the whole progam and emails up together and burn them on a data DVD. As for privacy nowadays it's becoming common place for many (particularly companies) to (1st) electronically read ones email if it "flags/scores" interest it can actually be read. Gmail have been reading my email and know how old I am ? Their adverts target my age. Probably from my Super-market/Cruise ship/etc flyers I get sent there (they offer specials and "points" that you only get by signing up and what I use Gmail for and who have never been given my name or real age) A good reason to consider using a PGP key for mail between friends and colleagues . Most people don't like using PGP but Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luisalbondigas Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 I used to use "The Bat Voyager" as a USB email Client, It has secure password requirement to open it. They for a payment of US$30 for program, also give a Google hosted email address; 'username at "TheBat.net" I used my own USB. When my email gets over 2 gig in size I zip the whole progam and emails up together and burn them on a data DVD. As for privacy nowadays it's becoming common place for many (particularly companies) to (1st) electronically read ones email if it "flags/scores" interest it can actually be read. A good reason to consider using a PGP key for mail between friends and colleagues . Most people don't like using PGP but "times are a'changing" Hah, The Bat is alive and well, eh? Nice to hear. Frankly, I'd prefer my mail to be strongly encrypted both in transit, locally outside of real time viewing, and specially out on the servers. Unfortunately, in-transit encryption is a red flag for those working independently in the third world (no comment on what parts of the glob this now includes..). Local is doable, but totally encrypted mail out on the servers is really what I'd like. That way, data mining becomes moot. Whether you're using anything from USB mounted mini-media, or larger scale arrays under your physical control, or remote and encrypted cloud based storage, it all comes down to frequency, reliability and security. Frankly, these are things that providers can, er, provide with greater reliability than I can personally. You can bet that if I were to go with another provider, I'll be looking for concrete promises wrt these things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petzl Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Hah, The Bat is alive and well, eh? Nice to hear. Whether you're using anything from USB mounted mini-media, or larger scale arrays under your physical control, or remote and encrypted cloud based storage, it all comes down to frequency, reliability and security. Frankly, these are things that providers can, er, provide with greater reliability than I can personally. You can bet that if I were to go with another provider, I'll be looking for concrete promises wrt these things. I've gone to "Thunderbird Portable" with a password protected USB What you are after is already provided by SpamCop email (don't know of any better). In life there are no 100% guarantees, SpamCop does try. A lot of noise about this but I find my ISP much more unreliable than SpamCop, with outages not uncommon. What do you do when this happens? If you did POP (you can still leave email on server) your previous email you would have it locally. To replace from back-up our old email it will take time. As a first with SpamCop (over 20 years now) they will be unsure of it's consequences and effectiveness. With other providers that have lost your email they don't try (to hard basket) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luisalbondigas Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Yes, of course you are correct. Why should anyone expect a for-pay email provider to implement a backup policy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MyNameHere Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Yes, of course you are correct. Why should anyone expect a for-pay email provider to implement a backup policy? Apparently, there is a backup policy. My old and new email appears to be back now. Perhaps you were hoping for an instant failover to redundant hardware with parallel data. I realize several days' downtime is inconvenient (maybe even painful for some), but I don't think CESmail is a large operation. Just a guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luisalbondigas Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Apparently, there is a backup policy. My old and new email appears to be back now. Perhaps you were hoping for an instant failover to redundant hardware with parallel data. I realize several days' downtime is inconvenient (maybe even painful for some), but I don't think CESmail is a large operation. Just a guess. Instant? How about 24 hours? Too demanding? Perhaps there were backups. How are we to know? The first thing we heard was that they were "attempting to recover the data from the failed servers," or words to that effect. That was over on the news group, iirc. Then the same person said he really didn't know, and that he works for the reporting side and not the mail side. Perhaps someone from the mail side will clear up the data security policy for us. Maybe after the restore exercise is done. If there's some explanation of what's happened, and a convincing explanation of what's going to happen going forward, then I can make a decision about continuing here or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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