Thousands Of Gmail Users Suffer Account Wipe-Out

Google has acknowledged that hundreds of thousands of Gmail users have lost access to their archived emails, folders and contacts.

The company said it is investigating the issue, which first surfaced on Sunday on Google’s support forums.

Loss of all information

Beginning on Sunday, users began reporting the loss of all stored email information.

“Whatever the error is on Google’s end… it’s basically reset my account so it’s like a brand-new Gmail account,” wrote one user. “My contacts are intact, but nothing else – the folders have reset to default, my signature line is blank, the ‘theme’ is changed back to the default and – of course – every single email from the last 7 years has vanished completely.”

“I have the exact same problem – looks like my account has been reset,” wrote another user.

Google acknowledged on its Apps Status Dashboard that it is looking into the issue and said it has restored the accounts of some users.

“Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future,” the company stated. “This issue affects less than 0.08 percent of the Google Mail userbase. Google engineers are working to restore full access.”

Access blocked

The company noted that, in some cases, users would be unable to sign into their accounts while engineers worked on repairs.

Google has not provided a time-frame for the completion of repairs. As of the time of writing the company has not yet identified the cause of the problem.

In November, Google hurriedly issued a patch for a vulnerability that could allow spam to be sent to Gmail users who visited a specially crafted website.

The bug was first reported on 20 November by TechCrunch, after someone known as Vahe G. created a site to exploit the issue. The situation affected users who visited the site while they were still logged onto Gmail, and reportedly worked regardless of whether or not the user was browsing in Google Chrome’s “Incognito” mode.