This photo shows a USB stick received at my software company last week. It’s from a newsagency sending in a backup for assistance. The damage to the stick and, in particular, the part that stores data was such that the backup was useless.
There is no point in backing up your data if you do not take appropriate care of the backup medium. Bending USB sticks kills them and their capacity to store your data.
Maybe it was damaged by the mail service?
No, we checked that.