Using e-mail as storage: A cautionary tale

Desktops crash all the time, but e-mail is forever. Or so some 14,000 customers of Charter Communications may have thought until they tried to log on recently and found their messages and photos gone and never to return.

It was a software glitch during routine maintenance that caused Charter to permanently dump the 14,000 active accounts. To compensate the people affected, it is offering US$50 credits.

The deleted e-mails had been provided free of charge to customers using the communication provider's triple play -- Internet, cable and telephone -- bundle of services, which, in theory, should dampen their ire. You get what you pay for, in other words -- and in this case, you get an additional $50 for your trouble.

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