Saturday, September 13, 2008

Google deleted my blog, email, photos, orkut profile - and my entire identity on the net!

On the 7th of September 2008, a personal disaster happened. My Google Account of four years was deleted. No reasons. No explanations. Just - gone.

I had logged in from the office to check my calendar in the morning. When I logged in again in the evening, there seemed to be a problem with the password.

After half-an-hour of increasing desperation, the screen showed a horrible message: my email ID of four years, kaustavcs@gmail.com, my orkut account, blog, calendar, igoogle page and all contents thereof had been oblivion'ed.

I dutifully logged into google's support website and lodged a complaint. It's been five days, and I am yet to hear a peep from them. Of course, you can't expect much from a 'beta' service that's really 'free'. It's entirely my fault that I did not have backups of my contacts and blog entries ... and my fault again, that I expected google to respond - or be atleast concerned that their systems could possibly have some major flaw.

No doubt a couple of you who read this will wonder what I'm cribbing about. After all, as stated by a reader in the blog of another unfortunate soul who went through the same thing I did - a few accounts that go missing in a million don't really matter. Unless, of course, its your account that got deleted.

I doubt if I'm going to get my old gmail ID back again - or my old Orkut profile, or my old blog. The addresses all seem to be still blocked.

But google (if you are listening): you've just lost a faithful evangelist.

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