Many thousands of Gmail users are waking up today to find their accounts disabled, completely wiped clean of emails and in some cases their contacts are missing.

Although some users have reported their accounts fully restored many are left stranded. Google says its engineers are busy working on the problem and have already helped out many of the affected users of their popular email service.

Gmail engineer Mike CH has said the disabling of certain accounts is just a temporary maintenance measure:

Over night we temporarily disabled access to some Gmail accounts due to a service disruption. The disables are in place to stop the account from changing whilst we make the necessary repairs.

Access to your accounts will be restored shortly. Whilst an account is disabled:

• You will be unable to sign in to any Google service.
• Mail sent to the account will bounce.
• Hosted content you own like blogs, sites, shared items in Google Reader and so on will be unavailable.

The message you see on sign-in may refer to you to Google terms of service, but this is a generic and incorrect message. You have not violated the terms of service and we