Google Gmail Users Awaken To E-Mail Inbox Wipeout

Google is working to restore Gmail e-mail accounts as thousands of users wake up Monday morning to e-mail inboxes that have been completely wiped out.

According to Google, Gmail service was knocked out of commission for a chunk of its users – it's estimated that roughly 150,000 were affected -- on Sunday. On its Apps Status Dashboard, Google called the Gmail outage a "service disruption" and said it affected 0.29 percent of Gmail e-mail users as of 7:30 p.m. eastern on Sunday.

Dozens users on a Gmail forum posted that their messages, labels and settings had been set back to the default status and that their inboxes had been wiped clean of years' worth of data and messages.

After several hours, Google posted on its Apps Status Dashboard that the issue was affecting 0.08 percent of its Gmail users and that "Google engineers are working to restore full access."

During the service disruption, Google also locked many users out of their Gmail accounts to fix the problems, making them temporarily unable to sign in while repairs were made.

"Overnight we temporarily disabled access to some Gmail accounts due to a service disruption," Google Gmail engineer Mike CH wrote on the Gmail Forum. "The disables are in place to stop the account from changing whilst we make the necessary repairs."

:story; Full story: CRN