russellholliman.com

Google to arbitarily erase calendar data?
Monday, July 23, 2007

This has to be a hoax. If not, it seems that Google Calendar plans to arbitrarily erase then data of Plaxo users on Wednesday unless they opt out. The message supposedly from Google's Calendar Team reads:

From: "Google Calendar Team"
Date: July 23, 2007 5:50:45 PM CDT
To: podcastready@gmail.com
Subject: Important Message from Google Calendar
Reply-To: calendar-support+help@google.com

Hi user,
It's come to our attention that the some of your Google Calendar information may have been mistakenly deleted through your Plaxo account. Because many users were unaware that deleting the data on Plaxo would cause the data to be deleted from their Google Calendar accounts, we are going to restore all of the calendar information that was deleted through Plaxo.
If you do not want Google to restore calendars affected by this issue, please reply to this email by Wednesday, July 23, 9AM PDT. For questions relating to the Plaxo service or this issue, please contact support@plaxo.com.
Thanks,
The Google Calendar Team

I only keep my Google calendar synchronized in case I get caught somewhere without access to my Outlook, which is rarely. And I don't mind it if they maintain the capability to restore my calendar to a previous point.

As an "opt out" feature though this makes Google Calendar totally useless to me. I can't rely on a service that would arbitrarily delete data that I've entered because they are not sure if I meant to add it or not.

July 25; 17:04 - I guess it was a hoax. Nothing has changed in my calendar (I didn't reply to the message) and when I went to check the date I noticed that it said "Wednesday July 23" - today is Wednesday but its the 25th...

Labels: google, plaxo

posted by Russell @ 10:48 PM,

5 Comments:

At 11:46 PM, Anonymous said...: Exactly how did you come to the conclusion that Google will "arbitrarily erase then data of Plaxo users ... unless they opt out"? The statement says that they will *restore* data that was erased *by Plaxo* unless you opt out. Plaxo's sync mechanism deleted calendars for Google users in a rather trigger-happy way, and Google is offering to restore this data for you if you mistakenly deleted your calendar. How is that a bad thing?
At 12:17 AM, Russell said...: If I don't respond to their email, which could have gotten lost or not read in time, then they would "restore" my data without my consent.
Doing this though would put back one or two entries I had, and remove the 1000 entries I placed there through Plaxo.

How is that a good thing?
At 12:25 AM, Russell said...: If this were something I could request then I can see the benefit, but just doing it without confirming that I want it done is wrong.

Plaxo will pick up those changes, and send them back to my Outlook and eventually remove everything from my Treo's calendar.
At 12:39 PM, Anonymous said...: Google's restore won't delete entries added through Plaxo. It will re-add calendars accidentally deleted by Plaxo.
At 12:59 PM, Russell said...: it seems that it didn't do anything, so the point is moot. but the fact is, nothing should be done to my data unless i ask for it. "opt in" vs. "opt out". had the email been for real, they would have messed up my calendar and schedule. that's my only point - you can't make such things "we're going to do it unless you ask us not to"