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  • KennySVG - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    Sometime ago I signed up for the free service for backify. After the email notice yesterday from Backify regarding the closure of all free accounts, today I received an email from Livedrive with some startling info. Here is a short excerpt from the Advisory Notice, which I found most surprising.

    "We would like to advise you not to provide any credit card information to BACKIFY.COM. If you have provided credit card information to BACKIFY.COM then we would suggest contacting your card provider and informing them that your card may be used fraudulently. If BACKIFY.COM have charged your card for services not provided you should contact your card provider and ask them to initiate a chargeback procedure."
  • Cas-- - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    This sounds very much like bait-and-switch to me which I was under the assumption is against the law.
  • rahul4aug - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    This is the mail i got from Livedrive <noreply@livedrivesupport.com>:

    Dear Rahul Aggarwal

    We are writing to you regarding BACKIFY.COM who you recently created an online backup account with.

    BACKIFY.COM was a reseller of Livedrive (http://www.livedrive.com). Livedrive provided the technology and service behind the product offered to you by BACKIFY.COM.

    We are writing to inform you that BACKIFY.COM is no longer a Livedrive reseller and the services that they purchased from our company on your behalf have been terminated. If you are using a service provided by BACKIFY.COM and powered by Livedrive then this service will now have stopped working.

    We would also like to advise you that we have received a number of complaints about BACKIFY.COM from their customers and from industry organizations. We would like to advise you not to provide any credit card information to BACKIFY.COM. If you have provided credit card information to BACKIFY.COM then we would suggest contacting your card provider and informing them that your card may be used fraudulently. If BACKIFY.COM have charged your card for services not provided you should contact your card provider and ask them to initiate a chargeback procedure.

    Please note that this advisory is being sent to you in good faith because we feel you should be informed that BACKIFY.COM is no longer a Livedrive reseller and of the complaints we have become aware of. No contract exists between yourself and Livedrive and we are not able to assist further in any dispute you may have with BACKIFY.COM.

    If you have installed the online backup software provided by BACKIFY.COM we highly recommend you uninstall it from your computer by following the steps below:

    On Windows:
    Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel and select Add/Remove Programs (or ‘Programs and settings’), select Livedrive and select uninstall.

    On Mac:
    Go to Finder > Applications and delete the Livedrive application.

    Please note that any data you backed up using BACKIFY.COM cannot be retrieved and we recommend you establish an alternative backup service immediately.

    Livedrive does provide a very similar online backup service to the one provided by BACKIFY.COM and you can read more details and, if you wish, signup for a trial on our website at http://www.livedrive.com. Please note however that we do not provide a free service as BACKIFY.COM did.

    Other online backup vendors you may wish to consider include:
    Carbonite.com
    iDrive.com
    Mozy.com

    We are sorry for the inconvenience this situation may have caused you.

    Kind Regards

    Livedrive Limited
  • MrJawbones - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    I received this Email and another Email from livedrive a few hours later saying all accounts are cancelled and all data is lost! Backify is no more. Below is an excerpt of the Email:

    "We are writing to you regarding BACKIFY.COM who you recently created an online backup account with.

    BACKIFY.COM was a reseller of Livedrive (http://www.livedrive.com). Livedrive provided the technology and service behind the product offered to you by BACKIFY.COM.

    We are writing to inform you that BACKIFY.COM is no longer a Livedrive reseller and the services that they purchased from our company on your behalf have been terminated. If you are using a service provided by BACKIFY.COM and powered by Livedrive then this service will now have stopped working.

    We would also like to advise you that we have received a number of complaints about BACKIFY.COM from their customers and from industry organizations. We would like to advise you not to provide any credit card information to BACKIFY.COM. If you have provided credit card information to BACKIFY.COM then we would suggest contacting your card provider and informing them that your card may be used fraudulently. If BACKIFY.COM have charged your card for services not provided you should contact your card provider and ask them to initiate a chargeback procedure."

    The full Email is here:
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3242711
  • Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    Updated the article with the info about the new email
  • e-kirill - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    That suxx hardly... Unpleasant story.
  • CharonPDX - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    I was using it to store my photo library - all 70 GB of it. Took forever to upload (largely because of a glitch on my end, I had to upload it twice,) but it seemed to be good. I tested downloading a few random files, they were correct. If, after a few months, the service had proven itself good, I was likely to upgrade to the 'briefcase' account, if for no other reason than to support the (what seemed like) excellent free service.

    And, yup, should have known it was too good to be true..... Got the same email as everyone else this morning, after noticing that the backup client said my account was invalid.
  • jasa1063 - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    Here is a posting from Backify.com about the situation and their explanation.

    LiveDrive Account Closures

    As all Backify members know now, LiveDrive has closed all the accounts. We would like to clear the situation up with our customers.

    As many of you know, you were unable to change/reset your password for the last 10 days or so. This was due to an error in the LiveDrive API. We made multiple contacts with LiveDrive through email and phone to get this sorted out. Their tech support kept us saying that their "dev team" is working on it. But the "dev team" could not sort out the issue in 10 days.

    Apart from this, their payment system failed on November 8. What that means is, we could not create any more new accounts, because their payment system kept declining all of our credit cards. Again, we contacted LiveDrive multiple times, but they could not sort out the issue in over 7 days.

    When we contacted them again earlier today and protested with strong words about the delay in providing a solution to our problems, they responded by immediately terminating our reseller account and all the accounts we have created.

    As for the email they sent to our customers, we assure you that you do not have to worry about your credit cards being used fraudulently. We did not store your credit card numbers in our system. And about the payments that you have already made,
  • MrJawbones - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    So who do we believe? In this light Livedrive looks like an ass. Besides this Livedrive sent out a fairly cold email, not empathetic at all and basically stating "your stuff is gone and there's nothing you can do about it, get someone else"...
  • FaaR - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    I did not interpret Livedrive's email as cold and unempathic. Rather, I find it positive they would go to the extra effort of contacting people they have no business relationship with to let them know what has happened.

    As to who to believe, that Backify did not respond to emails, support requests or queries regarding a review, even from a well-known web resource like Anandtech, feels VERY damning to me.

    Backify looks like an if not shady so at least shoddy fly-by-night operation, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that their house of cards collapsed pretty quickly.
  • MrJawbones - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    "inform you" "terminated", with no explanation of what happened. Seems pretty cold to me. Not that I'm against livedrive or anything. Backify probably was receiving hundreds of Emails for support and made the hallmark of all f-up's, they just ignored them because they didn't haven an answer yet.

    If you can't fix the problem the least you can do is let me know you're working on it, or tell people there are some serious issues, etc...

    /agree on the fly-by-night comment. I was suspicious as soon as they sent me my password in plain text in an Email. That really pisses me off!
  • CharonPDX - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    I read it as "someone reselling our service did something we consider fraudulent. As such, we have terminated our services through them. You can create an account with us, or here are some non-affiliated companies that provide similar services."

    Personally, I'm *GLAD* they deleted it. Being screwed by one company is bad, having another company "hold my data hostage" would be worse. If they HAD said "but you can regain access to it by paying us $xyz" I would have considered them complicit in the fraud and *REALLY* been pissed at them. Now I see them as an unwitting provider...
  • calansvc - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    "Personally, I'm *GLAD* they deleted it. Being screwed by one company is bad, having another company "hold my data hostage" would be worse. If they HAD said "but you can regain access to it by paying us $xyz" I would have considered them complicit in the fraud and *REALLY* been pissed at them. "

    At this point, I WISH someone was holding my data hostage. I was using briefcase, and now even my local copies are inaccessible from any of 3 different computers. So not only are my online backup copies gone, I can't even get to the local copies. And that is 100% on LD since they won't provide an alternative to getting their software to run locally so I can retrieve my own files on my own local machine.
  • erple2 - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Sadly, no, it's not on LD at all. It's on Backify to not screw you over, not on LD at all. In fact, LD went the extra mile to let you know that they were terminating their agreement with Backify due to whatever reasons there were.
  • Visual - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link


    I'm having a hard time imagining what kind of "fraudulent" thing Backify did, besides maybe not paying up the $60 per month. http://www.livedrive.com/ForResellers

    Besides, regardless of what "fraudulent" thing that was, LD should not have taken it on the end users.

    It seems possible to me that LD was just not able to have enough servers and storage space for all the data. We're probably talking about tens of thousands of accounts, and I just can't imagine how $60 per month can cover it. So at some point, LD found out that they can't in fact cover it. And decided to delete it.
  • mino - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    from LiveDrive AD:

    "Your customers are your customers
    As a Livedrive reseller, your customers remain your own. We will never contact your customers for any reason."

    SUUUURE ...

    If Backify lawyers are any good, they can easily bury LiveDrive for good in damages.
  • erple2 - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Ultimately, if Backify is a sketchy dealer, they don't have to even let you know that they're no longer in business. I consider it a service that LD has let customers that were potentially screwed over by Backify know of the shady practices.

    And you're assuming that Backify even has lawyers...
  • Visual - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - link

    > I consider it a service that LD has let customers that were potentially screwed over by Backify know of the shady practices.

    But see, LD did no such thing. They explained absolutely nothing to the customers. Who was screwed over by Backify, and how?

    "We stopped our service to Backify, so in turn Backify will be unable to perform their service for you. So you better not pay them or you're screwed."

    From this it seems more like I'm being screwed by LD, not by Backify. Ok, letting you know not to pay is good, it can save you some hassle with refunds, etc. But the lack of explanation or reason for the cancelled service is not good.

    Also, the very implication that Backify would refuse to refund payments for the service which they will not be able to provide, I feel constitutes defamation and is illegal, unless they actually have proof.
  • Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    I think the truth lies somewhere in between. Both companies are now trying to cover their own ass, by blaming the other company. If Livedrive really received many complaints about Backify, then they had a valid reason to cancel the contract. The reason why they received the complaints is most likely due to Backify's service, which I wasn't pleased with, for example. If there hadn't been any complaints, then I don't see why Livedrive would have cancelled the contract for no reason, unless it was making them too much loss.

    Either way, I would blame them both. They should have dealt with their disputes without causing issues for the customers.
  • MrJawbones - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    But if their service complaints were due to Livedrive's faulty API's, Livedrive can't use that against Backify!
  • GTVic - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    Sounds like Livedrive is providing almost all of the service including processing payments if you believe the Backify email. In that case Backify is more of customer service rep than anything else.

    Livedrive should have given users the option to sign up with another service in order to keep their files. So in that sense I agree that their email was "cold".

    I signed up for a SharePoint service and they would not cancel it until I removed all of my data. That is a good way to ensure the customer doesn't lose anything.
  • Visual - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    "unless it was making them too much loss."

    In that quote lies the truth, i think. http://www.livedrive.com/ForResellers
    Backify was paying a grand total of $60 per month. And they probably had thousands or tens of thousands of customers. I have no idea how that is supposed to work, but Lifedrive have still not pulled that reseller deal from their site.
  • Visual - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    Even if Backify were sloppy in their customer support or had a lot of customers complain from their services and caused Lifedrive to decide to pull the plug for a valid reason, Lifedrive still should have handled this better. They shouldn't have just cancelled all end-user accounts out of the blue without warning, pissing off even those customers who were not having an issue with Backify before.

    But it seems much more likely to me that Lifedrive just decided to pull their own bait-and-switch trick for some reason. If you thought Backify's offering is too good to be true, how about Lifedrive's reseller program? $60 per month for unlimited number of resold accounts? Yeah, right.

    I'm sure they just made that offer to get some initial customers, but once the likes of backify started to bring in new accounts in massive numbers, Lifedrive changed their mind and decided this offer is not good from their point of view.

    The offer is still up on their site, but I doubt anyone else trying to use it will have a better result than Backify.

    But they do have a clause "Livedrive reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to suspend the provision of Livedrive Services to you and/or terminate your Membership at any time, without warning." in the terms of service. I guess that makes it all right, then. At least, I doubt we will see much success to any court actions against them. Which seems like a shame to me.
  • GTVic - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    There should be a legal recourse. If your self-storage had a clause like that and just tossed out the contents of your locker you could sue them and win quite easily.
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    IT depends on how exactly LifeDrive and Backify were integrated. If Backify was buying LD storage in bulk instead of per customer LD might not know which bits of the data belonged to whom...
  • calansvc - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    I signed up for a month subscription with Backify specifically to use the briefcase for consolidating and transferring files while I build a home server. After all of this morning's BS went down, I contacted tech support at Livedrive, and still can't believe what I was told.

    First of all, they informed me that as soon as the Backify accounts were suspended (or deleted, whatever), all of the data tied to those accos was deleted from their servers. This means that even if Backify and Livedrive work this out, that data is lost. I find this EXTREMELY hard to believe (since anyone with any business sense at all would keep the data, to lure Backify customers to their own service, if nothing else), but the tech rep made it very clear several times that this was the case.

    So I asked about backups:

    "Well, you guys do backup the servers, right? So even if the accounts and data have been deleted, I could still retrieve my data if Livedrive and Backify work out their differences...right?"

    "No. Unfortunately, all data tied to Backify accounts has been irretrievably lost".

    Are you FREAKIN' KIDDING ME?

    So since I can't even access the local copies of the briefcase files due to the Livedrive software not being able to launch, I asked about that.

    "What about the files stored locally on my computer? I can't access those either."

    "Oh... those files are still there so accessing them won't be a problem. It's only the server files that have been deleted."

    "Ok, so how do I do that? YOUR software is preventing me from even seeing them.

    "Ehhh... oh yeah. Sorry, but there is nothing we can do."

    "So I can't bypass the are, or get a temporary account to access MY OWN FILES STORED LOCALLY ON MY OWN MACHINE?"

    "No. Sorry."

    This is unbelievable. I don't care who's at fault or what is going on at the corporate level. The fact is that Livedrive's software is preventing me from accessing local files.
  • leexgx - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    i agree that LD should of not done what they did, not really used livedrive yet but the folders you have shared should still be accessible (but the briefcase mite not save them the same way folder sharing does)

    really if your info is that important you should sue Microsoft for terminating an service with out giving 30 day notification to its customers, they should of suspended credit cards and give the users 30 days to get there data off the cloud or at least unshared the folders and move data out of the briefcase, does not matter if they are an reseller backify

    have you looks for where the briefcase folder is on your pc they mite be all there unless its encrypted

    guess next time you not trust all your data with an online service again
  • sweetspot - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    FYI,

    All the so called free online systems, will eventually go this way, and all your CLOUD DATA will get hijacked, its going to happen to everyone sooner or later on every scale.

    All ONLINE CLOUD BASED SERVICES WILL EVENTUALLY 2 THINGS HAPPEN --

    1. They go out of business so all your data and or games and other things are lost.

    2. Its no longer free and you must pay, or they hold your data hostage and you never get back your stuff unless you pay.

    Even the mighty STEAM games - eventually will fall prey to this concept, its inevitable.

    As a business model cloud computing is a terrible idea for End Users. A persons data and things they purchases are lost once the cloud business model changes at the discretion of the host, the end user has no control once some new scheme is imparted upon them.
  • cditty - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    When you posted this, I knew better. If it appears too good to be true, it is.

    I was (and still am) for that matter that a publication with your readership would even put that garbage up, it being an unknown company and all.

    I think writing the article at all was a bad idea on your part.
  • calansvc - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    I don't think some people are grasping the ramifications of this.

    Regardless of what Backify did or didn't do, the fact is that Livedrive suspended the accounts, deleted the data, and cut off all access to local file copies (at least for Briefcase users) without any notification or regards for the users at all.

    This means that anyone using ANY cloud storage reseller that uses the Livedrive backend is at risk of not only loosing their online data, but locally stored data as well... at nothing more than a whim on LD's part simply because a reseller upset them somehow.
  • randyjk - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    Get used to it. Its called cloud computing and even though you are dealing with one provider, there are others, some critical layered below. Did you even know Livedrive had your data? Of course not cause you aren't doing due diligence for a free service. And now the data is gone and no one is taking responsibility for anything. Who has time to sort this out? Good luck with that.
  • randyjk - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    And the communications on this issue from both companies, how pathetically unprofessional. Must be run out of someone's garage.
  • calansvc - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link

    If you were talking to me, of course I knew Livedrive had my data. I was also under the impression that it was still stored locally and would be available if something happened to the cloud.

    In fact, even the LD rep I talked to this morning thought I could still access my local briefcase data... until I informed him that thanks to their hissy fit with Backify (in more polite words), my local files are also now inaccessible since the LD client requires the Backify account credentials to access local files. His reply was basically "Oh yeah...sucks to be you".

    Apparently, Livedrive hasn't realized (or doesn't care) that anyone running the LD software is actually THEIR customer, regardless of who it was purchased from. So I'll say it again; if you are using any provider that is reselling LD, you better hope that the reseller doesn't piss them off.

    And someone please explain this to me... why would LD not want to simply take my money, give me a new account, and let me access my local data that is sitting here on my PC? It's like they are out to somehow spite Backify (?) even at the expense of making money from the people that would migrate to them to recover lost data.

    It gets more mind boggling by the moment.
  • nullroute0 - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    can you really trust these faces with your data?
    http://www.livedrive.com/management
    1st guy looks like an oompa loompa, 2nd guy looks like the dude from american idol, 3rd guy is one scarry mofo
  • FlyBri - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    The reason why the 2nd guy looks like Simon Cowell from American Idol is because it's his brother.
  • nullroute0 - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    according to LD's faq, you should be able to access the briefcase if your PC is offline, did you guys tried disabling your internet connection before opening the briefcase?

    http://www.livedrive.com/FAQ#faq-briefcase-6
  • calansvc - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Interesting point, but it doesn't work for me. I have to be online for the LD client to authorize the account...and since the account credentials are now invalid, the client doesn't launch.

    On a side note, disabling the authentication service and then launching the LD client causes a BSOD.
  • ol1bit - Saturday, November 19, 2011 - link

    More bastages!

    As Always thanks for the straight dope AnandTech!
  • Steve Brown - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link

    Saw twitter @dwdrive_dot_com and they are offering Backify customers help. Anyone emailed their Customer Service to see if we can migrate? They are also a LiveDrive reseller.
  • Steve Brown - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link

    Saw twitter @dwdrive_dot_com and they are offering Backify customers help. Anyone emailed their Customer Service to see if we can migrate? They are also a LiveDrive reseller.
  • Shining Arcanine - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link

    They give you unlimited storage for $5 a month:

    http://www.backblaze.com/

    Everyone seems to love them. I would like them more if they supported Linux and *BSD, which are the only operating systems I can say that I actually use, but at least their operation is legitimate.

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