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Russians not to blame for Gmail and YouTube issues last week

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By Alan Friedman

Published: Dec 20, 2020, 4:17 PM

Russians not to blame for Gmail and YouTube issues last week

When it comes to getting information instantaneously, the world has become spoiled. So when Gmail and YouTube both went down last Monday for 47 minutes, the outages were felt by many. On the very next day, Gmail went down again. With Russia believed to be responsible by everyone (except the president) for a series of hacks on U.S. governmental agencies, Microsoft and other tech giants, there is fear about the lack of online security in the states. Google did say that there is no sign that its online services were impacted by the hacks believed to be perpetuated by the Russians.

Google self-diagnosed the problem and discovered that it wasn't lupus or tuberous sclerosis. Actually, the tech firm said that the issue was caused by a problem with Google's system for identifying people online. The system helps verify and track users of apps like Gmail and YouTube who have signed-in to the app. In October, Google moved these tools to a new file storage system and according to Bloomberg, accidentally misreported some of the data. This, not Russian hackers, was responsible for YouTube and Gmail going down according to Google.

Gmail was down last Monday and Tuesday

On Monday, 15% of requests sent to Google's cloud storage system were disrupted. The following day, with Gmail down again, Google placed the blame on data migration. Letters being sent via Gmail were bouncing back to senders with an accompanying message that read, ""The email account that you tried to reach does not exist." On its website, Google apologized. "We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support," the company stated. "Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

There have been no subsequent outages reported after Wednesday's issue.

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Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.

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