Gmail's weekend data loss

Image Source: www.worcester.org 

Few months ago I wrote about our increasing dependence on Internet here: How dependent are you on Internet?. Despite the instances of data losses from internet giants being a possibility, one such instance is the recent loss of Gmail data effecting about 0.02% of its users, I am still one of those who relies on my email servers as backup for my conversations and documents exchanged via emails. In this recent Gmail incident, the bug effected all the multiple copies of the users' data Google stores in its servers. As of now Gmail team is still unable to recover the lost data completely, as the App Status page still continues to show the scary yellow wrench. 

Data loss sucks! I know it first hand since I lost years of work sometime back when a friend mistakenly formatted my hard disk. Ever since I was a little careful in making multiple copies of data. Now that buying Tera Bytes of space has become cheaper, taking data backups should not be as costly as it was earlier.

Do you also rely on your email servers and other Internet options to store your data? What precautions do you take to secure your data and prevent its loss?

How dependent are you on Internet?

What would you do if on one fine day all you encounter is "Page not found" or "Error 404" no matter what page you try to access? How would you react? How dependent are you on the Internet?

To maintain all my monetary transactions and to split my bills with my friends and flatmates, I use a web based online tool. And very recently the site went down. Although, I'm still not sure if the site would ever be.working again and if I will get my information back. And this left me thinking about the loads of information we share on the Internet. What if, one day we can NOT access any of that information? To make it worse, what would happen if all the information falls in the wrong hands? Scary, ain't it!

And there is another aspect to this topic. Is your dependence on Internet addictive? How much time do you spend on Internet (Facebook, Orkut and what-not) even if you don't have to? I came across this funny yet sensible article by a university counseling center which talks about Internet Addiction Disorder on the similar lines of Excessive Compulsive Disorder. (Also see this fun and informative web page dedicated to Internet Addiction.)

Have you ask yourself lately if you are addicted to Internet?

~Vee