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**Paul** · 03-06-2004, 17:55

We have received the following update from NTL sources ;

Quote:

We have a major programme underway to upgrade our email service, and we are investing in state-of-the-art equipment and software.

Unfortunately during this period of moving across to this new platform, our mail service has not been was dependable as our customers would expect, and we have had major problems a group of customers [460,000 users, 270,000 active] on one particular email server on Thursday 27th May at 1000hrs.

The backup database used was stopped on May 18th at 01:01.
The mssr was put in place May 27th at 09:57.

We immediately switched to a back-up server so customers who access their mailbox regularly and download their email onto Outlook should not have noticed any problems.

However customers who only access and download mail occasionally will not have been able to access mail that was sent to ntl's server before that time, or saved in your Webmail folders - inbox, drafts, outbox or personal folders. We have since taken steps to restore the majority of that mail and the system is now up and running again.

Unfortunately we could not retrieve mail saved sent, received or saved in your ntl mailbox between Tuesday 18th May at 0100hrs and Thursday 27th May at 1000hrs, and you could be affected in the follow way:

Regular users via Outlook (every day):
You may notice that a few mails reappeared or were duplicated in your mailbox. This is because we took a back-up copy at a particular point on 18th May when those mails were in your mailbox. If you deleted these particular mails they may reappear, or if you saved them they may be duplicated.

Occasional users, those who had not checked for a number of days, those who accessed between 18th May and 27th May
We took a back up copy on 18th May and have restored your mail from that. We have not been able to restore any mail received from the time you last accessed & downloaded your mail to when our system was up and running again on Sunday. We have also not been able to retrieve any mail saved in your Webmail folders between 18th May and 27th May.

You may also notice that a few mails reappeared or were duplicated in your mailbox. This is because we took a back-up copy at a particular point on 20 May when those mails were in your mailbox. If you deleted these particular mails they may reappear, or if you saved them they may be duplicated.

Irregular users who did not access mail between 18th May and 27th May:
We have not been able to retrieve any mail delivered to mailboxes between 18th May and 27th May.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you and can assure that we are doing all we can to make sure this doesn't happen again. We would also encourage customers who were expecting important emails around the time of the server problems to check with the sender.