NewsDemon experienced a disk failure about a week ago. According to their post the disk contained customer data for a small portion of members. This isn’t a data breach. No information has been stolen. In this case the data was lost for good. Apparently the backup was overwritten before they realized the issue. If you have a NewsDemon account I suggest you log in and check it. Contact NewsDemon support for further assistance.
It sounds like those affected will need to sign up for service again. Depending on how much you were paying that could be a problem. It looks like NewsDemon is currently offering unlimited Usenet for $12 to $13 a month. That will likely be too high for some people. Especially if you were on a $5 or $6 a month plan. We can help lessen the blow a bit with our Demon Deal ($9.99 a month) but it’s still a bum wrap for those with lower priced plans. Right now unlimited Usenet is running about $10 a month from several leading providers.
There are a number of NewsDemon customers disscussing the issue on Reddit (here and here) and we’ve heard from several members who are now without accounts. Many felt that NewsDemon used the disk failure reasoning to cut off low priced accounts. Specifically those who were downloading a lot. Regardless of the reason if I was on a $5 or $6 plan and had my account cancelled I’d be very unhappy. Disk failure aside I think NewsDemon should have come up with a way to reinstate accounts with proof of previous payments.
Here’s a copy of the related NewsDemon blog post:
An unfortunate issue with one of NewsDemon.com Newsgroups payment processing servers occurred over the weekend. A severe disk failure lead to the loss of unrecoverable customer data for a small portion of our members.
After several attempts to recover the lost data, both NewsDemon.com Newsgroups and their payment processing partner are unable to retrieve the information. Although payment information has been lost, other data such as NewsDemon.com Newsgroups member’s username and passwords are unaffected and they will be able to login to the members area without issue.
Those users who have been affected by this breach will still have their remaining balance of their existing account available. However, affected users will need to create a new account once their balance has been exhausted.
We want to stress strongly that there is no evidence that any customer information was compromised. The situation is solely due to a disk failure and no attempt was made to breach or gain access to any of our user’s payment or personal member information.
We greatly apologize for the inconvenience this presents our affected customers. We’ve spent time and resources in attempting to recover the data. Unfortunately, we have been unable to do so despite our efforts.
If you have any questions or require further information, we urge you to contact our support team at support@newsdemon.com
We thank you in advance for your patience and understanding. We hope to better serve and provide you the best possible USENET experience.
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