Unwanted Christmas present
Microsoft has admitted that a bug wiped out some Hotmail users' inboxes of all their emails and while it fixed the glitch and apologised, it did not say why the problem occurred.
According to the Associated Press, Microsoft's online message board was bombarded by complaints from panicked Hotmail users over the New Year Weekend after their emails had vanished without a trace or had been sent to their deleted mail folder.
Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate VP for Windows Live, wrote in a blog that 17,355 accounts were affected beginning on 30 December and blamed "the course of mailbox load balancing between servers" for the problem.
"We identified the root cause and restored mail to the impacted accounts as of yesterday evening, January 2nd. As with all incidents like this, we will fully investigate the cause and will take steps to prevent this from happening again. We're very sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused to you, our customers and partners," he added.
While some people might think the glitch is a bit of a storm in a teacup, Microsoft's message board was apparently flooded with complaints to the tune of 489 pages and one comment read: "My inbox of over 8,000 emails [collected over 10 years] is still gone. I am devastated by the loss, my life, business, tax info etc was all in this email I accessed daily. I was given some inadequate responses and then ignored by Hotmail support."
It seems Microsoft's support was the bug-bear of many a complaint. Another user wrote: "Having read 482 pages of the Windows Live Solution Center posts, is it not time to close this thing or rename it? It is very far from being ‘Live' and completely useless for solutions!"
Furthermore, some people have complained that while their emails were not deleted, that Hotmail is being incredibly slow and they cannot sync their Windows Live Client with Hotmail.
