Missing vault

I've just had the unfortunate experience of trying to access my vault from my iPhone (the only device that I have been using for this since I've signed up).

When I try to access my vault I get a message: "Error while communicating with the server" (my internet connection is working). I opened a chat session with support and they advised that I try to log in to https://identitysafe.norton.com/ to check if I can reach my vault there. When I did that I got a message saying "No vault for this account". They suggested that I either used the wrong email or that I deleted my vault, neither of which is true. When I told them as much they simply said something along the lines of "sorry, your vault is gone and there is nothing that we can do about it", which coming from a company like Norton who is supposed to care about their customers and their data, it is totally unacceptable. I've since come across this thread in the forum, which seems to indicate that they had a similar problem, some months ago on 25 May 2017, where customer vaults simply disappeared: https://community.norton.com/en/forums/missing-vault-issue

The post indicates that there should be no new customers affected by the issue. It appears that the issue has now returned. The post indicates that one should restore your vault from your PC, but since I have always only used my mobile (and trusted Norton to keep my data safe) I don't have a local backup.

My questions are:

1) has anyone else experienced this?

2) does Norton have any disaster recovery ability, or ability to restore to a previous point in time, or should I face the reality that they have lost all my data?

3) is this actually a case where my vault was deleted, or will it magically appear again? Reason I ask is because that seems to be a theme on the forum where people have "lost" data or the ability to access their data, only for it to appear again sometimes weeks later.

 

I've added the chat log if anyone cares to read it for more information.

Kehlerjr

From the PC backups, you can restore the current cloud vault. From your main Norton Product, click on the Identity box. Then click on ID Settings. Click on Configure at the right. Log into the vault, then click on the gear icon at the bottom. On the Import/Export tab, click on Import. Navigate to the .dat files you found, and choose one from some time before you noticed the problems. Choose to replace the existing data to avoid possible duplicate entries.

 

The same thing happened to me yesterday.  I went to pay bills but my username/password wouldn't populate - so checked the vault and of the over 100 logins I had, only 23 remained.  No problem I thought, I'll just pull the backup from the Vault stored on the Cloud.  Same thing - 'no vault exists for this account.'  Online support just wanted to go into my computer and see what the problem was, well clearly the problem was my online vault has disappeared.  He said all should be backed up on my computer - and there is a file called Norton Identity Safe Backup, however they are all .dat files.  I asked what do I do with those, but received no answer. 

 I changed my email address for my account about 6 months ago and have had no issues.  But tech decided that was my problem and to make sure before I make any changes to back up my data.  Eventually the tech person told me I would have to create a new vault, but be sure to back up the old one first?  Really?   Said they could help me create a new vault and they would sync it online so I didn't face this in the future.  I said that my old vault was already synced online because I have accessed it from work before, so that was not very reassuring.  His response, "I am not assuring you I am telling you facts.  As these are machine (sic) and we cannot do anything about it.  I believe you understand there is nothing perfect and there are some limitations." 

Then he cut off the chat conversation.   What is the purpose of my Norton running a backup of all my data if it doesn't back up the passwords?  And why would it keep some of the logins but not others on my computer when there is nothing in the cloud?  I'm going to try the A Team this morning for a hopefully better outcome, since that was clearly the B or C Team that I was dealing with last night.