Comments on: Carbonite Backup Service – Unlimited ?

By: Ron Schenone

Ron Schenone — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 17:42:50 +0000

Hello Michael,
Check out their TOS and also Privacy tab for more info.
http://www.carbonite.com/en/terms.aspx

Hope this helps.

By: Michael McShane

Michael McShane — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 16:04:57 +0000

I am investigating issues with Carbonite with a client of mine. Specifically issues with the Volume Shadow Service (VSS) which is used by Carbonite and Symantec (among others.)
In this case the user’s profile was hosed temporarily and the error messages from Vista had VSS issues.
Additionally there is a story that Carbonite does demo’s for large corporations and regularly displays other company data (to show the restore process.)
Is there anything in the terms of service that would allow this?

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:43:14 +0000

Carbonite sucks if you have video. That is all.

By: Ron Schenone

Ron Schenone — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:22:33 +0000

Hello Mike,
Let us know if you get the problem resolved and let us know how the Carbonite support is.
Thanks, Ron

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:13:47 +0000

I’ve been a paid Carbonite user for 6 monhts or so (maybe a little less). I’ve got Terrabytes of hard drive capacity (mostly decades worth of backed up home videos). I’ve selectively backed up 110GB of the most important data (none of it videos). One of my drives died recently and I had 85GB of that drive backed up through Carbonite. I successfully restored it to a subfolder of another drive (took 11 days to restore over a 10mb connection… It seemed to be capped at 1.5mb though).

All fine so far, until about an hour ago, I see that I now only have 2.5GB backed up?!?!?!?! I could understand maybe that the 85GB getting screwed up in the confusion of being relocated, but what about the other 22.5GB?

I sent Carbonite a question and am awaiting the response.

By: Claire

Claire — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:10:24 +0000

1. I am inclined to believe what appears to be a client with no ulterior motives, over the CEO of the company.

2. The CEO just admitted that they DID use those TOS in the past, so why would they not have sent that email to the blogger in question?
Their TOS allowed only limited use, he exceeded that limit, I find it perfectly believable that as a result, they sent him that email.

3. Sounds like the new TOS is exactly the same, and would still terminate someone’s account, only it no longer specifies a definition of abuse.
What does this mean?
This means they can now cancel your account for even MORE reasons than the blogger stated before, and have made their terms even MORE vague and thus unreliable.

I’m glad I read that blog post, and the CEO’s response. I am still on my trial, but am now cancelling it and uninstalling the software. Besides, it was taking far too long, relative to the excellent upload speed that I have.

By: Ron Schenone

Ron Schenone — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:55:39 +0000

Hello David Friend,
Thank you for dropping by and clarifying not only the bogus email but also your companies policy.
I’ll be doing a follow-up to the original article and include your post.
Regards, Ron

By: David Friend, CEO Carbonite, Inc.

David Friend, CEO Carbonite, Inc. — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:06:14 +0000

Carbonite has NEVER cancelled a customer account for ANY reason, let alone abusing the unlimited backup space.

The “email” cited above is bogus. No such email has ever been sent by Carbonite.

The “Terms of Service” cited above have not been used for nearly a year and is not what is on our web site. See the Terms of Use link at the bottom of our web site home page, or go to http://carbonite.com/terms/. You will find a similar Policy in the TOS for every online backup company.

Termination and Fair Use Policy

YOUR USE OF CARBONITE PRODUCTS IS SUBJECT TO CARBONITE’S “TERMINATION AND FAIR USE POLICY.” THIS POLICY IS INTENDED TO ALLOW CARBONITE TO DENY SERVICE TO ABUSERS. USERS WHO ARE DEEMED TO BE “ABUSERS”, IN CARBONITE’S SOLE DISCRETION, MAY BE NOTIFIED PRIOR TO SUSPENSION OR TERMINATION OF THEIR ACCOUNTS, HOWEVER, CARBONITE RESERVES THE RIGHT TO TERMINATE OR SUSPEND SUCH ACCOUNTS WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE IN THE EVENT OF A POLICY VIOLATION. ANY FAILURE BY CARBONITE TO ENFORCE THIS POLICY WILL NOT PRECLUDE US FROM ENFORCING IT AT ANYTIME IN THE FUTURE, WHETHER FOR PAST OR CURRENT VIOLATIONS.