They have a retention policy [1] that states backups from PCs that have not connected to the service for 6 months will be deleted. However, this policy has never previously been enforced and is not highlighted during signup or setup. I've been a paying user of CrashPlan for around 8 years and was not aware of this policy. The computer in question was listed as not having been active for nearly 2 years. I have several other backups that have been inactive for up to 5 years. I have not yet received any emails about these other devices, but I can only assume I will be soon.

I received no prior warning or notification that this was going to happen.

I contacted support [2] and they claimed the new enforcement was due to a recent audit of the service.

Although the email I received informed me that the data had already been removed, as of this moment it appears to still be accessible. Support have so far been unable to tell me how long it will remain available for, so I'm in the process of downloading many gigabytes of old backups as fast as I can in the hope some automated process doesn't delete them before I have restored them all.

Not the kind of action I want to see from a service that I need to trust with backups of my data.

[0] - http://pastebin.com/SrJuwgDV

[1] - http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/4/Subscriptions/Backup_Retention_Policy_For_Inactive_Cloud_Destinations

[2] - http://pastebin.com/ee32yhzB