Firm Deleted Its Google Data, So It Escalated Its Support Ticket To a Lawsuit (theregister.co.uk) 107
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes the Register:
An interior design tools startup called Mosss on Wednesday sued Google to get it to restore its data after someone at the startup accidentally deleted the firm's G Suite account. In a pro se lawsuit [PDF] filed in US District Court in Oakland, California, Mosss, under its previous corporate name, Musey Inc., asked Google to help it restore its data...
Initially, the filing says, the company believed Google would be able to help because a customer service representative said he'd deal with the issue. But the cavalry did not arrive... "All efforts failed and at the end we received a one-line email that stated our data was lost and couldn't be returned to us."
Except perhaps not. According to the complaint, the company was informed – it's not clear whether Google or a third-party advised this – that it could seek a subpoena or file a civil lawsuit to access its data. So that's what it has done.
Initially, the filing says, the company believed Google would be able to help because a customer service representative said he'd deal with the issue. But the cavalry did not arrive... "All efforts failed and at the end we received a one-line email that stated our data was lost and couldn't be returned to us."
Except perhaps not. According to the complaint, the company was informed – it's not clear whether Google or a third-party advised this – that it could seek a subpoena or file a civil lawsuit to access its data. So that's what it has done.
It's in the cloud! (Score:1)
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Poof! There goes your data.
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Corporations cannot generally file pro-se lawsuits. It is one of the side effects of the corporation being its own legal entity; that paperwork cannot walk into the courtroom and represent itself. It is one of the main reasons many small businesses are Sole Proprietorships instead of corps.
So expect the lawsuit to also go Poof!
If you look at the PDF, they didn't even have the decency to print another copy and fill it out correctly, they just crossed out their mistakes. Yeah, courts love that.
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HA, thanks for the interesting comment! That makes sense for why corporations cannot represent themselves. If they did, maybe the board would need to (unanimously) nominate one of the directors to do so.
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Yes. Give it a few years ... medium size orders will be running compute and storage nodes in the same distributed IT closets that now house network routers.
Re:WTF this happens all the time (Score:5, Funny)
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Video or it's not true
The real, real news (Score:5, Funny)
The real, real news is that someone managed to delete data stored by Google.
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The real, real news is that someone managed to delete data stored by Google.
That remains to be seen. I'm guessing we'll see a followup reposted on slashdot in the next few months saying that Google restored everything.
Re: The real, real news (Score:2)
Assuming Google uses REAL storage controllers, restoring the data should be a console one-liner.
Getting into the NOC desk so that can happen? Almost impossible.
Getting a NOC staffer that is not physically in India? Hilariously naive.
UX/UI Company? (Score:5, Insightful)
"While our data has real monetary value...it is the work created by scores of employees and contractors over three years that's irreplaceable," the court filing says, citing user feedback studies, UX/UI design and testing, algorithm evaluations, demos, videos, engineering attempts and the like.
Oh, so really nothing of value was actually lost, and the world is a better place with one less UX/UI "design" firm in existence.
Thank you Google! We owe you a beer.
Re:UX/UI Company? (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering they are supposed to be UI/UX experts it makes you wonder how they accidentally deleted their account. There are plenty of warnings to click though, something you would expect them to know not to ignore.
Re:UX/UI Company? (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering they are supposed to be UI/UX experts it makes you wonder how they accidentally deleted their account. There are plenty of warnings to click though, something you would expect them to know not to ignore.
No one said they accidentally deleted their account due to a UI error. Quite likely it was someone being told to do the wrong thing, or deleted the wrong account.
Why not file a request to the NSA (Score:2, Informative)
I mean what sort of company does not know that the NSA back's up the entire net in some shape or form?
File a freedom of information act and see what happens, worst is they say no. best is, here is your files LOL
this company is using the delete as a business excuse to avoid saying that they are failures, and are looking for someone to blame
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I'm absolutely amazed that this comment has been upvoted as "Informative". As of 2018, there are 2.5 * 10^18 bytes of data created every single day on the internet. [domo.com] The idea that anyone has the money or resources to copy even a microscopic fraction of that, much less retain it for any length of time, is so laughably stupid that anyone putting it forward is clearly someone who has zero clue about technology.
What the NSA does is effectively a "grep -l 'lets blow up the WTC' *" on whatever data streams it can
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Someone (you) should ProTip Brewster Kahle [archive.org]
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They just add shite to your data base entry. Your mission should your choose to accept it, is to poison that data base with false connections and associations, mixed behavioural patterns, wildly distorted belief structures and false associations with others. Misinformation has always been the best way to thwart the corruptly professional paranoid, a flood of it from all sources. Your job is to be everyone you are not on the internet, so they never know who you are, to use their paranoia against them and enj
Re: Why not file a request to the NSA (Score:1)
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"Utah Data Center - America's Backup!"
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someone got my joke
thank you
figures you have a low user id 1997? mines 1999
Why does this require a lawsuit? (Score:1)
Can they not simply restore from their last backup?
Re:Why does this require a lawsuit? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of companies think the cloud obviated the need for backups. Until they find out Office365 is just Exchange and will eat mailboxes and individual messages just like it did with their on-prem Exchange installation, except now they don't have access to the logs and Microsoft simply blames the client for corrupting the server database.
Re:Why does this require a lawsuit? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had 2 EC2 instances marked bad because the underlying hardware went tits up. 1 was fine after a shutdown cycle relocated it elsewhere, but the other had to be restored from a backup.
Yes, a backup.
Azure SLA: 36 per month with redundancy (Score:1)
The SLA for most Azure cloud services is 99.9% *IF* you have redundant resources in different zones. Only for 36 hours per month will both of your services be down at the same time, Microsoft says.
Note that is limited to only "due to circumstances within Microsoftâ(TM)s control". If Microsoft can blame someone else, it doesn't count toward the 36 hours of allowed down time.
Doh! .36 hours (Score:2)
I knew 36 hours sounded too long when I did the math in my head. 0.36 hours. So 20 minutes per month, if you pay double for redundant resources.
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That sounds terrible. We've been using Exchange for 15 years in our company and have never seen anything like that.
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About as incompetent as it gets (Score:2)
What about hiring actually competent IT folks and having the usual minimum of two (!) independent (!) backups? Well, I guess the leet startup scene does not need that.
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One of the reasons companies move to the cloud is they don't have competent IT folks
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Well, yes. Some Dunning-Kruger type synergy at work.
More detailed summary (Score:5, Informative)
So the company contacted Google, and a Google rep responded that "he'd deal with the issue" according to the article. But since a month ago, nothing has been done. The company is now seeking a subpoena for the data. I can only assume that company hopes that Google has a separate archive kept for legal reasons that a normal tech cannot access and thus they can recover their data.
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Fine, but why is that any problem of Googles? Google merely complied with the company's request to delete.
Re:More detailed summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Its Google's problem if they were asked ot delete the data, and said "we've deleted all your data"... ... and then kept it.
I guess Google's defence will be that they did delete the data (not that I believe this is the case - look at other tech companies keeping your data around even after you've manually deleted it) but can recover from old backups... I'm sympathetic to that argument, backups don't magically lose data that was deleted from production.
Re:More detailed summary (Score:5, Interesting)
The company is wasting their time. They don't have a separate backup. G Suite is certified to various standards, of which require Google to permanently destroy data to ensure it cannot be recovered. Companies require certainty that if they ask for their data be deleted, it's actually deleted. Last thing you want is some former employee resurrecting an account with all it data.
It's not that different to secure document destruction services.
To get the point of deleting the account requires, cancelling the subscription and then closing the account. The latter is a two step process with a big red warning stating this is irreversible. Irony is the company is a UX/UI company.
I call bullshit. (Score:1)
It is simply impossible to "accidentally delete" your G-Suite account, if you try, they will ask you again and again, "hey, this mean, die, crush, kill, destroy, delete, annialate, remove all your data, do you REALLY want to do that", they ask you to type in something like "yes, i want to delete", check multiple checkmarks, again and again, etc, this cannot happen by accident.
So someone at that Firm did this with full intent (ex employee?), or this is a cry for attention, "hey google, we're an unknown U/X c
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I think it's tied in with their corporate rebranding. Someone zigged when they should have zagged.
Customer Service Representative? (Score:5, Funny)
The real story here is they apparently managed to get hold of an actual living and breathing human at Google. HOW DID THEY DO IT?!
Re: Customer Service Representative? (Score:1)
Easy. Complain on a public forum that the website you were searching for didn't come back on the first page of results and the entire engineering team will be summoned to work to fix your problem.
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Oh Google will pick up the phone if you pay them. It's the free tier that gets no support.
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Why would they spend money for phone support on a free product? You also get phone support if you are paying them for google one storage, but I've never called em, so don't know what that really entails.
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G Suite is a paid product.
https://gsuite.google.com/pric... [google.com]
The cheapest option is $6/month/user so you can imagine what kind of support you get for that.
Customers get support (Score:2)
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HOW DID THEY DO IT?!
You have special rights at Google when you give them money instead of just giving them data.
Data Recovery (Score:4, Informative)
As to the google rep that said they'd try to get it back, they probably did try, but it was too late.
The companies only real recourse is to load from their backups that were not stored with that remote service. If they didn't have a separate backup, that's their own F-N fault as well.
When you delete something on a computer, it's not actually gone yet. If your OS has a trash or recycle, it's temporarily held in a special folder or location. However, if someone empties that or the OS needs space, it will empty it, which means files go through an actual deletion, which is what happens in an OS that doesn't have that particular safety feature.
When a file is actually deleted, it's not gone, at least not yet. Rather the space it took is now flagged as available for use.
That is what data recovery relies on, that the file is still there, just not marked as in use.
However...
When the computer goes to write something, it writes to available space. If the space it writes to used to be part of the file you wanted to recover, it's now trashed. In some cases the file isn't completely overwritten, and you can try to recover those leftover parts, but this is a rather intensive task and VERY expensive. Of course, those pieces may not be of any use. To go with the car analogy, half a tire isn't going to be of use to someone that wants a car.
Obviously plenty of files get completely overwritten.
This entire process isn't on a time table, it simply happens based on activity and the need of the OS. Files can be recoverable years later, though bloody unlikely, or they can be wiped out in miliseconds. There's no way of knowing. Of course, the sooner you attempt to recover, the better your chances.
Now if you're looking at a cloud storage, you can bet that older data is stored in prime locations, and those will have a higher desirability by the OS, so if they get deleted, the odds of them staying recoverable for long are pretty damn slim. Yes, the OS has preferred areas for data storage based on it's file handling settings. For most people, this isn't something you'll ever mess with, but it exists and there are a variety of different ones out there.
As a side note to that, various defraggers also take advantage of those preferred locations and structures to "optimize" your drive for different things.
That's just a small glimpse into some of the realities of data recovery with the specifics glossed over since I wrote this for the computer literate who doesn't know data recover and doesn't believe it's a magical black box.
Now if you are thinking about data recovery options, but are worried that the technician may find your secret porn stash, you shouldn't worry. They will definitely find it, and probably copy it, unless it's child porn, in which case they'll call the cops. Other than that they don't give a rodents donkey what you have on there.
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As to the google rep that said they'd try to get it back, they probably did try, but it was too late.
This idea that Google ever deletes anything is interesting. Do you have any evidence to back up that that is their practice?
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There's a law in Europe [wikipedia.org] that requires it.
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the company involved screwed themselves and their lawsuit is frivolous in the extreme
When a corp tries to file a pro-se lawsuit on the signature of a co-founder, it is pretty much a given that they're running around screwing themselves and the lawsuit is frivolous.
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Then, there are SSDs. If you are using SSDs, and don't have a backup process in place, your data will be gone, full stop.
If the OS supports TRIM, as soon as a file is deleted, the OS will mark the space as free. The SSD will then go and zero out the pages and get them ready for new data. This is why file recovery utilities do not work on SSDs.
Then, there are layers of RAID, deduplication, and encryption.
In short, the data is gone, likely beyond recovery.
There is a lesson in this that is worrisome, and af
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Using the cloud? (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe it DOES, but then that what that do for you? A lawsuit? Don't make me laugh.
If it's YOUR data, YOU keep hold of it. You might let a copy out for caching and web availability, but you have a copy of it. Otherwise you don't have your data at all. And let's not get started on the "3 copies or you don't have it" bit, which I agree with.
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If it's YOUR data, YOU keep hold of it. You might let a copy out for caching and web availability, but you have a copy of it. Otherwise you don't have your data at all. And let's not get started on the "3 copies or you don't have it" bit, which I agree with.
What makes you think a company that managed to delete their cloud provider account is any good at keeping their own data safe. Frankly these are precisely the kind of idiots who *should* be using cloud providers, and then also have their admin rights revoked for their own safety.
Next up (Score:2)
Suing a square peg into a round hole.
Sorry, but once you click that you are absatively posolutely double dog sure you want to delete your account and all associated data, it's very probably really gone.
Mosssssssss (Score:2)
Lesson learned: (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have data that is important to for the continued existence of your company, not having full backups of all that data under your own direct control (== on your own computer(s), storage drives, etc.) is a recipe for disaster.
Sure, the systems of Google, Microsoft, etc. are fairly resilient, but I think it is fair to say that Google's engineers will lose a lot less sleep over your data disappearing in a mishap than you would yourself.
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"in the cloud" == "on someone elses computer"
If you have data that is important to for the continued existence of your company, not having full backups of all that data under your own direct control (== on your own computer(s), storage drives, etc.) is a recipe for disaster.
We have a situation here where a company through whatever process fuckup managed to delete a core part of their business support. What on earth makes you think their data is any safer being managed by them?
If anything all their data should be put on someone else's computer and then they should have their admin rights revoked.
I have no doubt if you asked these guys about backups, they'd all go down to the parking lot and reverse their cars a bit then come back and say "Done and why did you ask us to do that?
It's not Google's fault your a moron (Score:1)
If they didn't take the time to read the warnings, they probably would not have taken the time to make regular backups.
Does not seem accidental. Perhaps disgruntled employee? Of course, the same employee would could have also had access to the backups, so it potentially would have been a wash.
This is one of the reasons to keep some of the backups in off-site storage so these "accidents" don't have so much impact.
Firm Deleted Its Google Data, So It Escalated . . (Score:2)
Damn !
I kinda' hate legal maneuverings, but this one actually makes sense.
They did a 'STUPID!', but see an avenue to correct the 'STUPID!', and it requires a 'Court Order' to access the information.
My Take on this is - - - WELL DONE, but ALWAYS DOUBLE-CHECK DELETIONS - - - - - - - DUH!
ps - this doesn't even really address the core of the issue - - - BACKUPS