People often wonder why I use Outlook as my desktop client that polls and pulls my POP3 email from Yahoo and Gmail.

More recently, Gmail supports IMAP, with the “labels” sorted in nice folders. In my article Combining the Power of Gmail and Outlook Email, I gave 5 powerful and productivity tips when used together.

The point is, you should always have a backup of your email.

Well, here’s a case where having an email backup can save your email archives. I am shocked that these kinds of errors exists today.

Charter Communications 14,000 customers loses email

A software glitch during a 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 e-mail service had been provided free of charge to customers using the communication provider’s “triple play” service. Internet, cable and telephone are bundled as a service.

What the hell did the technician do?

Run rm -r * from root on a Unix server?

If you depend on your email for business livelihood, or use it to store attachments of photos from friends or family, I urge you to do 3 things.

Backup, backup, backup.