Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

blog.rongarret.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 267 posts

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#61

Post by josefresco »

nik736 wrote: post #26

What I don't understand is... when this data is oh so important, where is the backup?

I deal with small business owners regularly. While this seems crazy, it's not even close to the worst we've seen. Entire businesses based on free email, entire businesses based on a social media following from one network, entire businesses based on an undocumented "black box" server that everyone is afraid to touch ... the list goes on.

I routinely think about by my business model and the repercussions of losing access to an online service. I backup incessantly as a result. BRB, going to backup my MailChimp lists.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#63

Post by cmiller1 »

tjoff wrote: post #43
SkyPuncher wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So they lied in the first response (all data is wiped and unrecoverable) Not defending Mailchimp, but keep in mind the perspective and context. To a customer support agent using some backend interface, it very well could be "completely wiped". To an escalation team, they may be able to pull it from backups in an "unofficial" manner.

It is still a lie. Also keep in mind the perspective and context that the end user has no way of knowing. And even if the data can be recovered in an unofficial manner whether they will actually bother is highly unlikely if they care as little as they most obviously do. So, as a user it is a pretty safe bet to just assume it is gone (but do keep poking).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

"A lie is a statement used intentionally for the purpose of deception"

I don't think you can prove it was a lie.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#64

Post by patrickg_zill »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #40
hippich wrote: post #13

To people mentioning public shaming. I had a mailing list with them removed with all contacts lost and account banned without even notifying me. Customer support indeed responded, but with something like your account was banned because you are involved into cryptocurrencies (i had hashcash.io - no selling or buying of crypto is even close) and we completely wiped all your data. Only after a hint about possible public…

> So they lied in the first response (all data is wiped and unrecoverable) Not defending Mailchimp, but keep in mind the perspective and context. To a customer support agent using some backend interface, it very well could be "completely wiped". To an escalation team, they may be able to pull it from backups in an "unofficial" manner.

If management sets up a system which intentionally results in untruths being told to customers ...?

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#65

Post by abc-xyz »

cmorgan31 wrote: post #53
abc-xyz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not everyone using a mailing list service is technically capable of doing this, or understands why it's even necessary? I never used MailChimp but if I did then I would assume that the mailing lists I built with their service would be 99.999% secure, and that I'd always be able to access it even if they went out of business. Reading this thread with many users claiming similar experiences is quite frankly sho…

What drives the assumption that their mailing lists would always be available to you even if they went out of business or that they are almost perfectly secure? Is it due to standards set by large companies or just an idealized desire?

Because I assume they use Google/Amazon cloud services which are designed for 99.99999999% durability, just as I assume they often make backups (it's not like it would be expensive for them to backup mailing lists every hour or so).

If they went out of business then I would also assume they would give customers at least several months to export their mailing lists.

Edit: for some reason I'm not allowed to post new comments (presumably because of the downvotes to my other comments), so I'll just reply here: Would it be naive/fraudulent to promise the same durability as the storage service you're using? After all you're just feeding the data to their service through their API. I of course wouldn't promise this kind of up-time, but once the data is successfully saved then I fail to see why it would be wrong to make such claims. Assuming you also made regular backups of the data you feed to their services (which I certainly hope MailChimp do) then you can be even more confident that the data won't be lost. If Google/Amazon banned the accounts storing the mailing lists then I'm sure it could be recovered, especially by a company of MailChimps size.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#66

Post by josefresco »

hippich wrote: post #13

To people mentioning public shaming. I had a mailing list with them removed with all contacts lost and account banned without even notifying me. Customer support indeed responded, but with something like your account was banned because you are involved into cryptocurrencies (i had hashcash.io - no selling or buying of crypto is even close) and we completely wiped all your data. Only after a hint about possible public…

> and own SMTP server

Good luck with that.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#67

Post by drwl »

mojowo11 wrote: post #58
SkyPuncher wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So they lied in the first response (all data is wiped and unrecoverable) Not defending Mailchimp, but keep in mind the perspective and context. To a customer support agent using some backend interface, it very well could be "completely wiped". To an escalation team, they may be able to pull it from backups in an "unofficial" manner.

As a manager of a customer service team, everyone on my team knows exactly whether something has been "totally wiped" or not, regardless of whether it's something that would require developer intervention to recover. To have your reps not understand this and ultimately mislead the customer (or, in this case, I suppose former customer would be more accurate) is a management/training problem, and what the rep ultimatel…

It's possible that tools used by Care/Support don't have everything implemented

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#68

Post by detaro »

drwl wrote: post #67
mojowo11 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a manager of a customer service team, everyone on my team knows exactly whether something has been "totally wiped" or not, regardless of whether it's something that would require developer intervention to recover. To have your reps not understand this and ultimately mislead the customer (or, in this case, I suppose former customer would be more accurate) is a management/training problem, and what the rep ultimatel…

It's possible that tools used by Care/Support don't have everything implemented

to quote your parent:

> regardless of whether it's something that would require developer intervention to recover.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#70

Post by detaro »

Spivak wrote: post #60
tjoff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still a lie. Also keep in mind the perspective and context that the end user has no way of knowing. And even if the data can be recovered in an unofficial manner whether they will actually bother is highly unlikely if they care as little as they most obviously do. So, as a user it is a pretty safe bet to just assume it is gone (but do keep poking).

It's a lie that organizations have backups? "Your data has been deleted" pretty much has always meant that it was deleted from the live servers and that the deletion will propagate through backups depending on the orgs retention policy/requirements.

We don't know the exact messages. If the poster asked for a copy of his data and was told it was deleted, then yes, that was a lie (although possibly the person sending the message genuinely might not have known better, which puts the fault more nebulously at "the company"). If they asked why their account was gone and the response said "all data has been deleted" without offering a copy of it, it's just bad service.

(Although given privacy regulations, it's a bad sign if a support agent can't give a precise answer about data stored or at least know not to make unchecked claims about it)

Post reply on HN