Cable Co. empties 14,000 e-mail accounts

Cable Co. empties 14,000 e-mail accounts
By JIM SALTER, AP Business Writer

ST. LOUIS - Charter Communications officials believe a software error during routine maintenance caused the company to delete the contents of 14,000 customer e-mail accounts.

There is no way to retrieve the messages, photos and other attachments that were erased from inboxes and archive folders across the country on Monday, said Anita Lamont, a spokeswoman for the suburban St. Louis-based company.

"We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error," Lamont said Thursday when the company announced the gaff.

Charter, one of the nation's largest cable TV operators, also provides telephone and high-speed Internet service. It has applied a $50 credit to the bill of each customer whose account was affected by the mistake, Lamont said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080124/ap_on_hi_te/charter_mistake

At least Charter gave them something in return.

just wondering

...other ISPs are similarly lax?

Do we know if Charter was on the list of companies that "cooperated" with the NSA warrantless wiretapping?

I don't think I'd want them telling me, "oh, but it's okay- we keep a copy of every email you receive!"

:scared: of that...

But then again yes no. If No Such Agency is interested it almost certainly already has it anyway. So a backup copy doesn't appreciably add to the risk.

The obvious if imperfect solution is to make backup copies of emails "in transit" legally "invisible" even to warrants. Same for emails that have be downloaded to a mail client, even if not deleted from the server by the account owner.

Only when an email is actively in transit or can be considered to be at its final destination (even if read with a web mail client and not deleted) is it visible to the authorities.