Lycos Netherlands has accidentally deleted thousands of active mailboxes during a clean-up operation. The internet portal wanted to close most of its inactive mail accounts, but included many active ones as well. Since no back-ups were made, it is impossible to recover any lost mail messages, the company says.

Dutch online magazine Webwereld (Webworld) reports that the system operator responsible for cleaning out the mail boxes has been fired. To compensate for the loss, Lycos will offer a premium account or hundred SMS messages sent from the portal for free.

Stricter inactive-account policies with many web mail services are the reason why many accounts get closed. In a push to cut costs and not waste storage capacity, companies such as Hotmail require that users sign into their account every 30 days - otherwise their account will be deemed inactive. ®

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