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AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning

seuros.com

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Re: AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning

#81

Post by yongjik »

blargey wrote: post #18
akerl_ wrote: post #11

They’ve really buried the lede here: this reads like the person paying for the account was not the post author, and AWS asked the payer (who from their perspective is the owner of the account) for information. That person wasn’t around to respond.

The lede buried under that lede is that (according to an insider?) some AWS employee accidentally wiped everything immediately (contrary to typical practice in such situations of retaining data while things get sorted out), leading to a chain of brushing-off / covering-up percolating through whatever support chain the OP was talking to.

I find that story really hard to believe. In a company the size of Amazon, I can't imagine a rogue employee running a tool that can willy-nilly wipe out customers' data without several levels of manager approval.

Besides, what would be the potential benefit of such a hypothetical script? The author mentions "a bill under $200," so that's the upper limit on how much it costs AWS to keep the author's whole data. If I was working there and a coworker said "Hey I created a script that can save the company $200 by finding a defunct (but paying) customer and wiping out their data!", I'd have replied "What the fuck is wrong with you."

Re: AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning

#82

Post by shakna »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #43
bryant wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If nobody has the repo checked out, what are the odds it's important? Oh boy. Tons of apps in maintenance mode run critical infrastructure and see few commits in a year.

And the people using it multiple times a year delete it afterwards?

They often only have a binary that you would have to reverse engineer. Source code gets lost.

To step outside just utility programs, the reason why Command & Conquer didn't have a remaster was:

> I'm not going to get into this conversation, but I feel this needs to be answered. During this project of getting the games on Steam, no source code from any legacy games showed up in the archives.

Re: AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning

#83

Post by burnt-resistor »

floating-io wrote: post #12

My fear of this sort of thing happening is why I don't use github or gitlab.com for primary hosting of my source code; only mirrors. I do primary source control in house, and keep backups on top of that. It's also why nothing in my AWS account is "canonical storage". If I need, say, a database in AWS, it is live-mirrored to somewhere within my control, on hardware I own, even if that thing never sees any production t…

Exactly. Techofeudal overlords can switch off all "your" stuff at any time. Always have a personal and a business disaster recovery plan including isolated backups (not synchronized replication) on N >= 2 separate services/modalities.

Options to consider for various circumstances include:

- Different object storage clouds with different accounts (different names, emails, and payment methods), potentially geographically different too

- Tarsnap (while using AWS under the hood but someone else's account(s))

- MEGA

- Onsite warm and/or cold media

- Geographically separate colo DR site, despite the overly-proud trend of "we're 100% (on someone else's SPoF) cloud now"

- Offsite cold media (personal home and/or IronMountain)

Re: AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning

#84

Post by _caw »

foundry27 wrote: post #80
ageitgey wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get an AI vibe from this post. Grammar checkers add em dashes, too. If anything, an AI tool would have written a shorter, less rambling post.

It’s easy to be fooled, myself included it seems :) For context, here’s a handful of the ChatGPT cues I see. - “wasn’t just my backup—it was my clean room for open‑source development” - “wasn’t standard AWS incompetence; this was something else entirely” - “you’re not being targeted; you’re being algorithmically categorized” - “isn’t a system failure; the architecture and promises are sound” - “This isn’t just about…

I got the sense the author wrote the post in collaboration with LLMs as a way of processing the experience:

> I was alone. Nobody understood the weight of losing a decade of work. But I had ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok to talk to

> To everyone who worked on these AIs, who contributed to their training data—thank you. Without you, this post might have been a very different kind of message.

It sounded like perhaps this post would have conveyed a message the author didn't think constructive if they wrote it entirely themselves

Re: AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning

#86

Post by burnt-resistor »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #17
floating-io wrote: post #12

My fear of this sort of thing happening is why I don't use github or gitlab.com for primary hosting of my source code; only mirrors. I do primary source control in house, and keep backups on top of that. It's also why nothing in my AWS account is "canonical storage". If I need, say, a database in AWS, it is live-mirrored to somewhere within my control, on hardware I own, even if that thing never sees any production t…

I once said to the CTO of the company I worked for "do we back up our source code"? He said, "no, it's on github". I said no more.

LMAO. Must be one of those MBA CTOs. At least mirror the crown jewels to bitbucket, Tarsnap, or somewhat else that has 2 weeks - 3 months worth of independent copies made daily.

If not MBA, the problem may also stem from the gradual atrophy and disrespect shown towards the sysadmin profession.

Re: AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning

#88

Post by burnt-resistor »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #34
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once said to the CTO of the company I worked for "do we back up our source code"? He said, "no, it's on github". I said no more.

If nobody has the repo checked out, what are the odds it's important?

Popularity != importance. There is plenty of absolutely critical FOSS code that receives very little maintenance and attention, yet is mission critical to society functioning efficiently. And the same happens in organizations too, with say their bootloader for firmware of hardware products.

Re: AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning

#89

Post by lowbloodsugar »

>For years, I’ve watched developers on Reddit and Facebook desperately seeking US or EU billing addresses, willing to pay $100+ premiums to avoid MENA region assignment.

>When I asked why, a colleague warned me: “AWS MENA operates differently. They can terminate you randomly.”

Huh.

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