Google wipes out Gmail settings and messages

COMPLAINTS ARE FLOODING IN to Google after some Gmail users woke up to find that their inboxes had been wiped clean of messages.

A number of Gmail forum posters report that their messages, labels and settings have all been set back to default. The consensus is that it is a problem on Google's end, with many people deeply concerned because many of them use Gmail as their main email account.

Steph Jane wrote, "I feel something must have gone wrong at Google or there are hackers working overtime right now, because it sounds like there are so many others like myself who have just lost all their emails within the last few hours."

Google confirmed that there is a problem on the Google Apps dashboard. Engineers are busy working on the issue, with the affected accounts disabled. It still hasn't been fixed by the time of writing.

The company said it affected less than 0.08 per cent of the Gmail user base. This doesn't sound like a big number, but considering that the Gmail user base is in the millions that still amounts to thousands of people losing their emails.

Already a major glitch for Google's cloud technology, this will be a horrendous public relations disaster if there is no backup system in place. The company is trying to sort this out quickly. µ