BEWARE - If you have a domain and website hosted with Telecom

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › BEWARE - If you have a domain and website hosted with Telecom

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

1332 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 152
Inactive user

#825348 25-May-2013 20:30

Woah, Telecom irreversibly erase your data for transferring a domain? That is insane.

insane

3325 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1006

ID Verified

Trusted

2degrees

Subscriber

#825389 25-May-2013 22:05

While what's happened is piss poor, have you contacted them about restoring the website from the backups they hopefully are doing on the platform? The longer you wait the higher the chance the backup data would have aged/past its retention.

nitrotech

1285 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 168

#825390 25-May-2013 22:14

insane: While what's happened is piss poor, have you contacted them about restoring the website from the backups they hopefully are doing on the platform? The longer you wait the higher the chance the backup data would have aged/past its retention.

+1 I really think that if you get elevated to the right level of support you'll find they'll do everything they can to help you.

mattwnz

20520 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 4797

#825399 25-May-2013 22:39

insane: While what's happened is piss poor, have you contacted them about restoring the website from the backups they hopefully are doing on the platform? The longer you wait the higher the chance the backup data would have aged/past its retention.

Many of the cheap ones only do daily ones, so may have already been overwritten I am afraid. The better ones keep an archive of say 2 weeks. I would get onto them ASAP to make sure ut hasn't been overwritten. It is always possible that they only deleted the DNZ zones off the server when the domain was transferred, and the data is still on the drive. Something just doesn't sound right

insane

3325 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1006

ID Verified

Trusted

2degrees

Subscriber

#825409 25-May-2013 23:22

mattwnz:

Many of the cheap ones only do daily ones, so may have already been overwritten I am afraid. The better ones keep an archive of say 2 weeks.

I happen to know a bit about backups :) Have built two enterprise backup platforms used my many NZ MSPs and large enterprise customers, I cannot imagine that anyone would possibly comprehend having only a 1 day retention. Currently the minimum we offer is 7 days; right through to 7 years.

Sure most people take a daily backup, but to have anything retained for less than 7 days is asking for serious serious trouble. As a hosting provider you don't back the data up for your customers sake, you back it up to save your own ass!

Hiamie

355 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 102

#825411 25-May-2013 23:27

Just thinking aloud....

If you do a Google search for the site, you may be able to access the Google cached version and use that as a base to recreate the original site HTML - if it was a simple webpage.

Or maybe using "the way back machine" archive site at http://archive.org/web/web.php might have a copy.

Anyway, as I said just thinking aloud...

New World

Shop on-line at New World now for your groceries (affiliate link).

Talkiet

4819 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3934

Trusted

#825413 25-May-2013 23:31

insane:
mattwnz:

Many of the cheap ones only do daily ones, so may have already been overwritten I am afraid. The better ones keep an archive of say 2 weeks.

I happen to know a bit about backups :) Have built two enterprise backup platforms used my many NZ MSPs and large enterprise customers, I cannot imagine that anyone would possibly comprehend having only a 1 day retention. Currently the minimum we offer is 7 days; right through to 7 years.

Sure most people take a daily backup, but to have anything retained for less than 7 days is asking for serious serious trouble. As a hosting provider you don't back the data up for your customers sake, you back it up to save your own ass!

Not always... I must prefix this comment with the statement that I know nothing about the OP's problem, or what backup system (if any) there is on the systems in question.

There certainly used to be large ISPs around NZ that didn't back up some systems at all because of the massively transactional nature of the data, and the short life of data on the system... For example, [ISP1 - not Telecom, but that's all I'm saying] in the late 90's didn't back up their customer mail servers at all and one day had a drive fail in the RAID. The story about what happened next is a little murky, but from what I remember, someone pulled the wrong drive out of the already degraded RAID and it all fell over. They called me to ask if there was anything they could do and keeping a wonderfully straight professional face I politely indicated that no, their data was hosed.

They glumly accepted this and posted a note on their website to the effect that there had been a transient failure with the storage system for Mail, but it was being worked on and there would be absolutely no data loss. As far as I can tell, no-one ever called them on it either... Hey, it's email and at the time it was all POP retrieve and delete so the mail server had a ridiculous turnover of data.

My point is that occasionally there is data that isn't worth backing up.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

mattwnz

20520 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 4797

#825417 25-May-2013 23:46

insane:
mattwnz:

Many of the cheap ones only do daily ones, so may have already been overwritten I am afraid. The better ones keep an archive of say 2 weeks.

I happen to know a bit about backups :) Have built two enterprise backup platforms used my many NZ MSPs and large enterprise customers, I cannot imagine that anyone would possibly comprehend having only a 1 day retention. Currently the minimum we offer is 7 days; right through to 7 years.

Sure most people take a daily backup, but to have anything retained for less than 7 days is asking for serious serious trouble. As a hosting provider you don't back the data up for your customers sake, you back it up to save your own ass!

If you look at the fine print of many web hosts, especially the really cheap ones, many either only do daily ones, or weekly ones. They put the responsibility back on the customer in the terms that their backups shouldn't be relied upon, and that the cusomter also needs to do their own backups too. Amazingly many cloud providers are the same, even ones that offer SaaS systems, where you can't really backup the website or data, apart from manually copying it from the webpage.

I don't think it is something many people think about when chosing a host. They are looking firstly at cost, and disksapce they get.

insane

3325 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1006

ID Verified

Trusted

2degrees

Subscriber

#825426 26-May-2013 02:53

Absolutely, I was thinking more about this after I posted earlier. IF backups were available as an optional extra and not purchased, and a user error caused data loss then that's unfortunate. But if a host looses data and has no backup.....well then that's awkward.

@Niel, Ah yes, risk vs cost. I think nearly every ISP with 10+years of trading has a dark story to tell, sorry i mean hide :-)

MackinNZ

450 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 119

Lifetime subscriber

#825884 27-May-2013 10:40

Telecom Business Hub cannot/will not help.

They do not perform backups of any hosted sites and refuse to escalate the call.

"We are very sorry for not telling you your hosting account will be deleted if you transfer the domain and well take your comments on as feedback".

Lesson learned. Don't use Telecom Business Hub for ANYTHING!

Telecom are a good ISP for your internet connection but AVOID them for e-mail, web hosting and DNS.

And the biggest lesson: (yes I know) BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP

Zeon

3926 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 759

Trusted

#825907 27-May-2013 11:27

Surprised they have no backups and very lol at deleting the hosting. Crazy.

Speedtest 2019-10-14

Geekzone support

Support Geekzone with one-off or recurring donations Donate via PressPatron.

mattwnz

20520 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 4797

#826189 27-May-2013 13:38

MackinNZ: Telecom Business Hub cannot/will not help.

They do not perform backups of any hosted sites and refuse to escalate the call.

"We are very sorry for not telling you your hosting account will be deleted if you transfer the domain and well take your comments on as feedback".

Lesson learned. Don't use Telecom Business Hub for ANYTHING!

Telecom are a good ISP for your internet connection but AVOID them for e-mail, web hosting and DNS.

And the biggest lesson: (yes I know) BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP

No, you should be able to escalate it to their management. Otherwise ask for a 'deadlock number' from their call centre, and go to the TDR, at www.tdr.org.nz to see if they can do anything.

It didn't sound like you were in the position to backup, were you? Were you also looking after the website?

Surprised that the telecom people who did reply to this thread , didn't look into this.

richms

29104 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 10222

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#826717 27-May-2013 22:58

This is a huge problem if someone manages to maliciously transfer a domain away from telecom that the data would disappear.

Not like most small businesses would even know what a udai is or how to keep it secure if they do have it.

Richard rich.ms

1080p

1332 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 152
Inactive user

#826732 27-May-2013 23:34

richms: This is a huge problem if someone manages to maliciously transfer a domain away from telecom that the data would disappear.

Not like most small businesses would even know what a udai is or how to keep it secure if they do have it.

Agreed, I'll be more careful about who I recommend in the future. Telecom were never on the list but now they never will be. :)

timmmay

20859 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 5350

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#826770 28-May-2013 07:35

That's appalling, just unacceptable service, and the lack of backups is inexcusable. If they had a disk outage what would they do, ask all their customers to recreate? Telecom corporate really need to be made aware of this, or go to the telecommunications commissioner if they ignore you.

I don't think anyone could reasonably have predicted that transferring a domain would cancel hosting. I've transferred plenty of domains between hosts and it's never happened.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4