Gmail users loosing all their emails and contacts.

"Found my account clean..nothing in Inbox, contacts ,sent mail..How can all these information residing in different folders disappear?"

This appeared in one of the google groups.

As it turns out, the cause is most likely an insecure system, that was attacked either through a trojan horse or a cross-site scripting attack. Suspicions are that it is related to an error in Firefox 2.0 (not updated to 2.0.0.1) that can be read about at http://nvd.nist.gov/nvd.cfm?cvename=CVE-2006-6507 . This error states "Mozilla Firefox 2.0 before 2.0.0.1 allows remote attackers to bypass Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) protection via vectors related to a Function.prototype regression error."

Later discussions has lead to requests for a backup routine in gmail, and that google should take responsibility for backing up these user's email. The thing is, users already have a way of backing up the emails, as gmail permits POP access to the account.

Acknowledgement: KFWebs