You never fully appreciate the value of a backup until you need it. When you consider how much we all use our phones these days, our handsets contain a wealth of data — and it make sense to back it up.
You never fully appreciate the value of a backup until you need it. When you consider how much we all use our phones these days, our handsets contain a wealth of data — and it make sense to back it up.
If you’re using an Android smartphone, you can use an automated backup feature to safeguard the data from your phone by backing it up to Google Drive. With your data stashed in the cloud, you might think all is well — but Google could delete your backups without giving you any warning.
This sound like utter madness, but it’s true. If Google thinks you’re not using your device, it seems to think that you no longer need the data you have backed up, and will delete it. You won’t receive a text, a notification or an email — your data could just be nuked.
The backup deletion «feature» is not new, but it has been brought to prominence by a Nexus 6P user who posted to Reddit using the name Tanglebrook:
So how come Google isn’t warning people about this? Well, technically it is. Take a look at the Google Drive support pages, and you’ll read the following:
So if you head away on vacation for a couple of weeks, leaving your phone at home, by the time you return from your time away, Google has already started the countdown to deleting your data. The chances are that you will use your phone on your return, but there are certainly circumstances in which this may not be the case (you might switch to another device for a while, for instance) — and then your data will be lost forever.
You have been warned.
Image credit: Creative Caliph / Shutterstock
