Gmail Glitch Wipes Out Tens of Thousands of Accounts

Tens of thousands of Gmail users found themselves locked out of their accounts Sunday, a glitch Google engineers were still struggling to fix and fully understand Monday. 

Initial reports suggested as many as half a million accounts were compromised, the e-mails collected over the years potentially permanently erased. Google acknowledged the issue at 3:09 p.m. EST Sunday; by Monday afternoon the company lowered the number of affected users to just 0.02% of accounts -- a small number that nonetheless translates into a large number accounts. 

Google has not said exactly how many users its e-mail service has, only that Gmail has "hundreds of millions" of users around the world. That would mean that tens of thousands -- 20,000 out of every 100 million -- of users were affected.

A Google spokesman told FoxNews.com Monday afternoon that all users would have their service back by the end of the day -- but it would be premature to speculate whether there would be any permanent data loss.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/28/gmail-glitch-wipes-150000-accounts/