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After realizing that my servers were offline since the 25th of January 2025, I've been in contact with Oracle support in a multitude of ways trying to figure out why this happened and how we can recover both the account and data.

I wasn't told that my account was disabled. I didn't receive an E-Mail or anything. When logging in, I was simply told that my username or password was incorrect. After (successfully) resetting my password twice, I realized it wasn't about the password. Oracle had just deleted my account without any notice.

Both through calls and text, always with the same service request (SR) number, I contacted support. Initially, support told me that my account was flagged “Inactive” and hence disabled. They also verified that they saw me login almost daily and that I never missed a payment or anything. Even if an account was inactive, that's never a reason to disable it, especially without any warning E-Mail or an E-Mail letting me know that my account was disabled in the first place.

This chat was the result of all of that, where the highest team I've yet been elevated to told me that there's nothing they can do about it, there's no reason they can tell me for why this happened, and there's no one else I could ask.

I also love how I ask “Is there anything I can do to avoid this happening in the future?” and they respond with “Oh, don't worry. You don't have a future at Oracle. This will not happen to you again, as we don't allow for you to make another account.”

The tech person at Oracle at least lets me know that they'd feel similarly betrayed and dislike this handling of user data too

Don't worry: I have backups of all of this. It's just kafkaesque what is happening here.

Interestingly, two days before Oracle deleted my account and all servers associated with it, I publicly criticized Oracle's CEO in a viral post for promising dystopian AI surveillance technology to his investors.

https://mastodon.de/@ErikUden/113879369270806353

What a weird coincidence.

Moving these servers, despite having no long term impact like data loss, will have some financial impact. Don't feel forced to, your vocal support about this issue was more than enough to turn my evening from a bad to a wonderful one, however if you have the financial resources I'd be happy about a little support:

https://mastodon.de/@ErikUden/113931409953809719

Where will this money go to ;)?

This morning, on February 2nd 2025 at 06:58 (GMT+1) I've received an E-Mail by Oracle stating “Your Oracle Cloud account has been reactivated.”

I couldn't believe my eyes and didn't really understand how to respond. At the point in time where I received this E-mail, my post regarding Oracle's mistreatment has already gathered thousands of shares and was also discussed heavily on Hacker News among other platforms.

My many pleas and requests from the past week didn't do anything. My GDPR request didn't do anything so far. But within a few hours of public complaints and so many people telling me to take this to court... I guess this was simply the easiest way.

I still don't fully understand the E-Mail I've gotten. It talks about an order about universal credits that occurred at 5:20 AM, where I've been cold asleep. When I login to Oracle Cloud, no such credits exist. Additionally, they don't show up when I look into the “Cost and Usage Reports” under my account management. Even more interesting are the dozens of files showing an account and server activity, with the calculated cost of it all, for a time period where my account was supposedly irreversibly deleted.

I'll share more interesting findings soon. I am honestly just shocked about this development. I would've expected many things except for a 180.

How are there Cost and Usage Reports for a time period where my account didn't exist?

I wish my main and inspiring takeaway here would be that we can fight them and win.

However, I was in no control here. The fact this resonated with a lot of people causing an internet wide uproar was nice, but Oracle's legal team could've decided to not care.

Are they taking the wind out of our sails by reinstating my account? Is this their way of admitting and undoing an honest mistake? Would this have happened if I never complained publicly about it, or was my private GDPR request what did the magic here?

I cannot tell you. All I can say is that your account and all your data still exists on Oracle's servers even over a week after your account has been “irreversibly” wiped. Keep that in mind the next time support tells you there's nothing they can do.

@grootinside @ErikUden

THIS. EVERYONE NEEDS TO THINK ABOUT THIS PART RIGHT HERE.