SOS: All G1, Gmail, Gtalk contacts disappeared. Please help!

[android007]

I have been using Gmail since 2004, without any major issues. I liked gmail so much that in Nov 08, I bought a G1.

The Gtalk app of G1 did give me occasional trouble in that sometimes the messages I typed didnt appear on the screen after pressing enter/send.

But NOW, I am in real deep s...err, trouble.

I went on vacation leaving my laptop behind - therefore using my G1 only for browsing and for checking Gmail. Yesterday, all my contacts - phone contacts, gmail contacts, gtalk contacts - all my contacts DISAPPEARED. Poof! Gone! Without a trace.

Now I have returned to my laptop, and the gmail and gtalk contacts are gone from there as well. Don't know what to do. Please help! Somebody!

P.S. - In what may or may not be a connected event, it seems that SPAM mails were sent from my account - I have received some bouncebacks from Spam filters of that message. The message (it was also in my vacation responder - which was turned on without my will, and in my signature - which was replaced without my will) is as following (please bear in mind that all this happened yesterday, and I have not accessed the web except from my G1, and that too only legit sites - Google search, Gmail, Google maps, Wikitravel and movie timings type sites):
Heya, how are you doing recently ?
I would like to introduce you a very good company which I knew. Their company homepage is www vanigo com. They can offer you all kinds of electronical products which you need, laptops, mobile phones, digial cameras, TV LCD,xbox, ps3, gps, MP3/4, etc. Please take some time to have a look at it, there must be something you 'd like to purchase.
Their contact E mail: vanigo @ 188 com
MSN : vanigo @ live cn
Hope you have a good mood in shopping from their company!
Regards.

 

[android007]

Turns out, it is a connected event.

Web searches have led me to believe that My Gmail was hacked by vanigo.com who sent spam to my contacts and then deleted all my contacts.

Google says it cant help recover the contacts. Thats absurd. Even Microsoft helped recover contacts of all its users that had the problem on Hotmail: Lost Contacts & Vanigo - Windows Live Help

I am enraged - had more than 1500 contacts - emails, phones, addresses. Moreover, I have a G1 phone so all my phone contacts (those 1500+) are gone too since G1 synchs contacts with Gmail.

I used to be a big Google advocate. Now I will boycott all Google products and start a Google hate group.

And before anybody jumps to claim that I wasn't careful and that I shouldn't blame Google, let me say this: my password is not a dictionary word, is not a name, is 10 characters long, is a combination of upper & lower case letters, digits and special characters, and was categorized as STRONG when I filled it in (the green almost filling the whole password strength bar). I do not use public computers and my computer is secured by CA, McAfee and Norton. My WiFi uses WPA encryption. All things considered, I am reasonably certain that I have taken adequate measures to protect myself (apart from backing up my cloud data).

I had been using gmail exclusively from my G1 phone for a few days when the breach occured - had not been using my laptop for anything at all. Also since for most people affected the breach seems to have happened at or around the same time period, it lends credence to the hypothesis that it's the cloud that was breached.

And don't you think it sucks that Microsoft, the company that we all have always thought of as having the suckiest support, is actually helping its users and Google is not Contacts & Address Book - Windows Live Help
Lost Contacts & Vanigo - Windows Live Help

Google's stubborn resistance to restoring the contacts is just annoying. All they need to do is restore the state to that on a particular date. I am sure they have this information at not one but hundreds of servers - gmail, gtalk, g1, backups, caches, etc. What's the point of a backup if you cant restore it?


Also, check out: SOS: All G1, Gmail, Gtalk contacts disappeared. Please help! - Google Mobile Help