What term is used for the condition in which information is destroyed due to failures or neglect?

The term used for the condition in which information is destroyed due to failures or neglect is "data loss." This concept refers to the situation where data is permanently or temporarily inaccessible, either due to physical damage (such as a hard drive failure), accidental deletion, or unintended overwriting of data. Data loss can occur because of various reasons, including hardware malfunctions, software bugs, human error, or inadequate backups.

Understanding data loss is crucial for students and professionals in computer science, as it emphasizes the importance of data management practices, including backing up information, using reliable storage solutions, and implementing data protection measures. This term contrasts with other concepts; for example, data corruption refers to the impairment of data integrity, where data may still exist but is inaccurate or unusable, while data compression involves reducing the size of data for storage efficiency. Data recovery is the process of retrieving lost or corrupted data, which is not the same as the condition of having lost the data in the first place.