UK-based Web hosting provider Fasthosts Internet (fasthosts.co.uk) recently encountered an error in an update to its mail server, permanently deleting some of its customers' emails.

According to reports, a human error during an update to Fasthosts' mail server housekeeping processes led to an undetermined number of its advanced POP3 mailboxes incurring a failure, resulting in a loss of stored emails. The company says the error has occurred on a small number of the advanced mailboxes, but the standard and Exchange mailboxes haven't been affected.

Fasthosts said that although approximately 50 percent of the emails were restorable through the company's backup, the other half were non-recoverable because the backup processes ran soon after the error, resulting in a permanent loss of files.