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Small number of users report total iCloud email loss, Apple working on the problem (Update: Apple acknowledges)

A discussion thread on Apple’s support forum appeared last night from a user who claimed all of his iCloud content disappeared without warning. A further glimpse at the following comments revealed the same situation occurred for a number of iCloud users.

One commenter, npascual, said an Apple support representative “acknowledged last night’s outage,” and then suggested the user “turn off all iCloud-related services on my iPad (Mail, Contacts, Calendars, etc.), wait a bit then turn them back on.”  The representative apparently indicated “everything would return after a short period of re-synching.” However, npascual noted it had been a few hours since the call without any repair.

Check out the full thread here.

9to5Mac reached out to Apple on this matter, and we will update when more is known.

UPDATE: Well, Apple is owning up to the problem, according to its System Status page, but the company is neglecting to give an explanation as to what is happening.

More thread comments are below.

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BrianGrand:

  • Jul 31, 2012 8:11 AM
  • I’m on the phone with Apple Support.  The tech says he’s not heard anything about this, but assures me that my emails have not disappeared forever, and that they do back up their servers.  Let’s hope he’s right.  The rest of you get on the phones so they realize “Cupertino, we have a problem”.

toreil:

  • Jul 31, 2012 8:55 AM
  • Same thing happened to me and my account got disabled too, changed the password to reactivate it.
  • Spoke to apple on the phone for an hour things arent looking too great. They confirmed all my emails were gone from my account. They looked for a back-up on their servers but could find nothing, they noted the time-zone settings on my account were not listed eventhough it was set on iCloud.com which was strange but after checking that out appeared not to be the problem. They have now set my account in trouble shooting mode (whatever that means) and flagged is as a high priority problem so should hopefully hear back from them in the next two days. I got warned not to set my hopes too high, i did get recommended to change my password so my iPhone couldnt sync anymore and the emails should hopefully stay on my phone.
  • I can’t give you guys the number that i called because they actually called me after i filled in a support form in the icloud support section. No idea how it worked, the guy was as surprised as me when we got connected.

pollster:

  • Jul 31, 2012 8:59 AM (in response to toreil)
  • Same thing happened to my wife here.  Clearly this is something widespread which was triggered just in the last 12 hours or so.

zerook:

  • Jul 31, 2012 8:51 AM
  • bit of an update – managed to get through to support here in the UK – They were not aware untill I called that there was a problem – two helpfull support people went through the process to try and recover my entire inbox and a load of other mailboxes that have vanished. No success!!! I have another .mac account that is fine – They have issued a temporary password and I will get a call back tommorow. Bit of a home goal this one apple!!!! If CGI companies are thinking of having render farms in ‘the cloud’ , maybe think again – It looks like a few of us have lost emails that go back years – imagaine losing millions of dollars of complex Hi Def images !! What are we suppose to do now – go find emails on our time machines !!!!!! A response from Apple would be a good idea.
  • Does anyone else agree – Mobile me was not broken but this is….
  • I want my mail back :-(

jack1949x:

  • Jul 31, 2012 8:59 AM
  • npascual,
  • you must of connected to the famous customer service type,,,,who just gets rid of you.  Obviously , she did not report the problem,,,because hours later,,,when I called…. they said they did not know about this.  Had received No phone calls (their stated primary method of monitoring issues).   I called the IPhone number.  Good folks there,,,but, still clueless.
  •        I have received no further communications from the Apple trouble shooting mode folks.  I have some back up ,,,but, was relying on the ICloud back up more.  Now being told that it may not really be a back up,,,!
  •        Good Luck..
  • Seriously,  this whole mobile me to ICloud change over , IMHO,,, has been poorly launched and managed.
  •       jack

fabian68:

  • Jul 31, 2012 3:26 AM
  • The same happened to me today. I-cloud is working but all my old mails have dissapeared completely.
  • I thought the point of i-cloud was to have an online backup?
  • Would be greatful to hear if you found a solution as none of their helplines are any help…

 

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