Yeah, this is awful. I don't understand why they would also delete the data from that machine even if new data weren't flowing. What if you had needed the data from years ago? Isn't that part of the whole point of backup??
1) You are paying for a backup service.
2) We decided that the version of your software is too old, even though it backed-up data.
3) Since you are a valued customer, we will delete your data.
4) We are a HAPPY company! Have a great day!
That's actually not the whole point of a backup in this context. It's important to remember that the Backblaze Personal Backup service is essentially an emergency extra copy, not a data archive. Once the client backs up a file (or more accurately a revision of a file), it checks every 30 days that the file still exists locally. If it does not, then it will be deleted from the cloud backup.
For example if you plug in an external harddrive and back it up with Backblaze, if you don't plug it in at least once every 30 days, then its cloud copy is deleted. So no, the intention of Backblaze is not to keep your offline machine from several years ago securely backed up.
That being said, you can pay for unlimited revisions which just stores your data in b2 and you pay per month on the extra storage. In that case then yes I would expect the data from years ago to still be present. But that's a recent addition, and not what the OP was using.
That might not be the _intention_ but surely backblaze doesn't just delete the entire contents of your account if your computer goes entirely offline for a month?
Suppose my house catches on fire. I might not immediately get around to booting all of my computers again (in fact, it might be months until I have the same set of computers again), but I sure don't expect Backblaze to just start deleting files even while I'm paying them!
Importantly they had the _choice_ to delete this data. Note that the email seems to indicate that the sender will personally delete the backup in a week.
