10 years of posts, lost forever?!?

Username (e.g. epiz_XXX) or Website URL

The String Network

Error Message

Website Deleted

Other Information

Without any warning, my webpage was deleted. I take no issue with it being deleted for inactivity and fully understand that, but I should have been given the opportunity to download my files before you deleted them. That was a forum with over 10 years of posts. Interviews with famous musicians. Posts by people who have since passed away. It is irreplaceable. Is there ANY way for me to get my data back? Please tell me you didn’t delete 10 years of my life.

I’m very sorry about this, but an account that’s deleted really is deleted. We don’t keep any backups of accounts to begin with, and when an account is deleted, all files, databases and any other content is permanently and irrecoverably deleted from our servers.

That said, you were sent at least one email by us when the account was suspended for inactivity, and an unknown number of emails by the hosting platform itself warning you prior to the suspension that your account was at risk. So the “without any warning” statement and not having any opportunity to download the files doesn’t seem accurate.

And I can’t stress this enough, but always, always, ALWAYS create and store your own backups. Creating regular backups of your website and storing them somewhere else is mandatory if you care about keeping the data. There are many different things that can go wrong and cause data loss, ranging from technical issues, accidents to malice.

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The only email I got was the one saying the website had been deleted. No others were received. It’s a shame. So many important interactions, lost forever. Friends who have passed away. Interviews with famous musicians. All gone. Very irresponsible of your company. I supposed it’s a fitting end to 2020 to have 10 years of your life deleted, without warning.

Actually, I just checked your account status. It was not deleted due to inactivity.

Instead, the account was deactivated through our client area back in October. That means that someone who has access to your client area (and is in the same network as you are, looking at the login history of your client area profile) took the manual action to deactivate this account.

This also means the website was down for almost two whole months. For two months, you have had the opportunity to reactivate your account, bring the website back online and continue its operation or just backup it’s content.

So please be careful who you are accusing of being irresponsible. Because what I see here points to that you requested us to deactivate your account. And if you did, that means you have seen the statement that deactivated accounts are automatically deleted after 60 days.

And if my assumptions are correct, that means that this is all on you. It means you did not keep your own backup. It means you requested your account to be deleted. And it means that you are calling us irresponsible for doing exactly what you requested us to do.

I’m very sorry for the loss of your website and it’s contents. But I cannot take responsibility for this data loss.

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