123-reg website-deletion error affected only a 'minority' of customers

Web hosting company claims error that "effectively deleted" some customers' websites not as widespread as feared

Web hoster 123-reg has revealed more details about the technical error that saw some of its customers' websites wiped from the face of the internet - an error that comes just days after another web hosting company admitted that stories of its own demise had been made up.

The company, which hosts 1.7 million sites in the UK, revealed on Monday that an error during maintenance "effectively deleted" a number of websites belonging to its virtual private server (VPS) customers.

123-reg tried to play the whole thing down in an updated statement sent to Computing, revealing that only a small "minority" of its customers were affected.

"We suffered a technical fault, which has affected a minority of 123-reg customers. The fault was limited to 67 servers out of 115,000 (across Europe) and it is important to note that only a selection of customers on the 67 servers affected has been impacted," the company said.

"We are investigating the restoration of each VPS on a case-by-case basis and are working individually with customers to keep them informed of the website recovery process. We are working as quickly as we can to restore service to normal."

Naturally, 123-reg is sorry about the glitch and apologised to those whose websites are still missing.

"We would like to extend our apologies to affected customers and assure them that we are doing everything we can to restore their data as quickly as possible," the statement said.

An apology is unlikely to be enough for many 123-reg customers.

One contacted Computing to say that the error could have caused their company to miss out on potential funding, as potential investors visiting the website would have seen the message '550 This domain is not hosted here', and drawn their own conclusions.

Furthermore, they added, the technical error is just the latest in a string of glitches by the company. "This is one of six occasions over the past 12 months where the VPS service has been affected at 123-reg," the customer claimed.

"All of the issues have resulted from process or human error. It is clear that 123-reg does not employ sufficient expertise or maintain sufficient hardware capacity to ensure that potentially catastrophic failures do not occur.

"It is also clear that they do not have processes in place which allow them to learn from previous mistakes."

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