Bob writes: : There is no way in hell that I would store my personal household : information anywhere but on MY hard drive! With the abilities the : hackers have shown us they have why would anybody want their information : stored anywhere else? good point, and one Australias second largest online auction site found out recently.. here's their notice on the front page when I visited last week: 22nd February 2007 At this stage the future of AusAuction is in the hands of it's past members. ******************************************************************** Late on the 18th January, whilst setting up AusAuction on a faster server and prior to updating the site software, we ran a process which inadvertently deleted the database. Since February 2005 we've employed a Brisbane company Webhost DSA Pty Ltd to back up our database server nightly. We contacted their Support Desk early on the 19th to gain access to the backed up database. We we're told that they had partially recovered the database from the tape backup but the backup was corrupted and they would attempt to repair it On Monday 22nd we were informed that the backup service had been decommissioned over 12 months ago, and that they'd informed us at the time and removed the monthly fees for the service from our account. Neither is true, they didn't inform us that the service would cease, nor did they remove the monthly fees for the service from our account. Apparently the original backup system had not been turned off and still ran nightly. Therefore there was a backup which was so badly corrupted that, in their opinion, nothing useful could be recovered. On Thursday 25th I finally managed to speak to the managing director of the company and asked whether or not the database could be recovered if more expertise were employed or if it was irretrievably lost. He said he'd get a data recovery company in Melbourne to examine the backup but that we shouldn't hold out much hope in that direction. He thought that there might be a possibility of recovering the deleted file from our database server and that attempts at this would be made by his staff. To date no useful data has been recovered. In retrospect, we should have made our own backups but when professionals are contracted to perform a service the expectation is that it will be done. Legal action will follow. ******************************************************************** We have a copy of the database backup that we made in February 2005 prior to delegating the responsibility to Webhost DSA Pty Ltd, we'll extract membership details from it and apply those details to the new site. In due course we'll contact our 5000+ registered members (as of February 2005) to let them know that the site is back in business The location of AusAuction has changed, it will be located at www.ausauction.com.au. During the restoration period the site won't be available to the general public. It will only be available to past sellers in order for them to re-list their items. If you wish to join as a seller please Contact Us Contact UsContact Us Brian Morgan AusAuction
