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Carbonite disputes ASA censure of cloud storage ads

Was ruling caused by communications snafu?

US cloud backup vendor Carbonite has said it will contest the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruling that its adverts claiming unlimited storage are misleading.

A single UK punter complained to the ASA that Carbonite's adverts with the unlimited storage offer were misleading and breached its guidelines. The ASA found against Carbonite, saying that it had not responded to requests for extra information about the adverts before the ruling was reached.

"Although unlimited amounts of data could be uploaded, we noted that if data uploads exceeded 200GB, less bandwidth would be available resulting in slower back up. Because it did not make this clear, we concluded the ad was likely to mislead," the ruling reads.

"The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Carbonite Inc. to ensure they made clear any reduction in upload speeds in future."

But Carbonite told El Reg in a statement that while the company was perfectly willing to discuss the issue with the ASA, it hadn't heard a peep from the British regulator about the case.

"We are currently reaching out to the ASA to explain that Carbonite's approach considers the customer's full backup experience, and focuses on the speed with which all files are restored after a data disaster," said Erin Delaney, Carbonite's director of public relations.

"The Carbonite Home service is unlimited as we offer unlimited backup space; we don't offer or claim to offer unlimited bandwidth. We hope that – with more information on Carbonite's backup processes – the ASA may reconsider their decision." ®

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