Not so long ago many Gmail users went to check their mail only to find
that their entire inbox and all their contact had been completely
deleted. This shocking discovery was something done by Google by
accident and only affected a very small percentage of its total users
but made many people think about what would happen if all their emails
were suddenly wiped forever. With approximately 300 billion emails being
sent every day around the world, and as you are probably an email user
yourself, you can imagine the carnage this could cause.
This article will attempt to offer some solutions as to what you can do if this happens to you.
Check who you are signed in as
If you are using one of the many popular online email providers like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail etc. it is possible that you have signed in as someone else. When you sign in you will notice that you can tick a box which says something like 'remember me' which means that every time this computer comes to this mail homepage it will automatically sign you in under whichever password that was used when that box was ticked. If you check the user name you are signed in you may find that your sudden terror need only last for a couple of seconds before you switch back to your account.
Check your hard drive
If this is not the case you may want to start checking your hard drive. Many email systems, both online and offline provide a system where they back up all your emails in a folder on your hard drive so that you can't lose them. If this is the case you may be able to just bring your emails back to life with a few mouse clicks. Also, if you use a payment service provider and you get a lot of your emails through them when for payment notifications for example, chances are they may have a back-up of a lot of your important emails such as receipts of payments and invoices.
Contact your supplier
If this doesn't work you may want to contact your email supplier. Companies like Google will generally fall over themselves to help you as getting a bad reputation for losing emails is bad for business. Chances are your supplier will have a back-up of your emails on their servers which they will be able to use to restore your emails to how they were before they got deleted.
