123 Reg suffers deja vu: Websites restored from August 2017 backups amid storage meltdown

Daily backups? We've heard of them

The UK's self-proclaimed number one website provider, 123 Reg, is having yet another very bad day, although arguably not as bad as those of its long-suffering customers.

We're told 123 Reg has hit upon the ultimate method to protect users' website files from hackers by, er, losing them. The hosting biz suffered a storage cockup – likely, failed disks – forcing it to restore some unlucky punters' websites from backups... that date back to August 2017.

@123regHelp @123reg You’ve lost some of my directory folders and replaced them with old, previously-deleted folders. This isn’t acceptable at all and I need to know when you’ll restore them correctly.

— It's me. (@thinlamas) March 5, 2018

Other users are reporting their 123 Reg-hosted websites have been taken offline with no indication from the Brit biz as to the nature of the issue and when the normal, sometimes problematic, service will be resumed.

Apologies but our site is still down due to @123reg. As they don't seem to be addressing issues raised in the support ticket we've no idea how long we will be away for

— FitChameleon (@TheFitChameleon) March 6, 2018

Trip and Travel Guide hope to be back as soon as @123reg fancy dealing with whatever issue wrecked our sites and others.

— TripandTravelGuide (@TripTravelGuide) March 6, 2018

The harassed support team at 123 Reg has no doubt been doing their best to staunch the outpouring of grief.

Unfortunately, confirming that the restored backups date from August 2017 and there is little more that can be done at this stage is unlikely to placate panicked users.

Hi there, we do apologise to all those customers affected. The backup of the websites is to August 2017. Can I take your domain names affected, please? Thanks

— 123 Reg Help (@123regHelp) March 6, 2018

Hi Mike, what we have restored is likely to be what we are able to at this stage. We are really sorry for this.

— 123 Reg Help (@123regHelp) March 6, 2018

123 Reg told The Register: "Yesterday morning, a hardware failure on one of our servers led to a small number of customers’ websites being offline. Following attempts to restore these websites, regrettably, some returned to earlier versions or lost some content on their sites. Our service teams are continuing to help customers restore from their own backups. 123 Reg would like to apologise to all customers affected."

The hosting business has form with outages and security headaches, with unencrypted data connections and email services at times less stable than a drunk at a free bar.

Customers will be reassured that the backups appear to date back to when 123 Reg, er, hiked its hosting prices. So that's OK then. ®