All data might be recovered in the end

Oct 15, 2009 08:23 GMT  ·  By

The Sidekick data loss issue that made the headlines during the past few days has been brought to court by Sidekick customer Maureen Thompson from Atlanta, who filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and T-Mobile on the account that these companies failed to securely and automatically back up users' data, although they marketed the service this way. A Bakersfield, Calif. man who lost his data when the servers went down also filed a class-action lawsuit against the duo.

“Defendants breached their duty to Plaintiff and the other Class members by failing to adequately insure the safety, security and availability of the data belonging to Plaintiff and the Class members,” Thompson's complaint says. “Specifically, and further, Defendants negligently failed to invest the resources, including hardware, software, procedures, maintenance, security, back up procedures, and the training and testing necessary to insure that the functions and operations Defendants assumed would operate to permit Plaintiff and the members of the Class to access and keep safe and secure that data they entrusted to Defendants.”

According to Maureen Thompson, her daughter, who is an aspiring model and singer, has had all of her appointments, contacts and lyrics stored on the smartphone and has lost them all during the server outage. A press-release announcing the class action lawsuit also calls for all those who registered data loss during the outage to join in, requesting monetary damages from Microsoft and T-Mobile.

The two companies already stepped forth and announced that they were working on restoring the service and recovering users' data, though initially they showed skepticism that the files would be brought back to Sidekick users. However, since they said afterwards that it would be possible for data to be restored, is seems that some “employees inside Microsoft who are working on the Danger/Sidekick meltdown” believe that all data might be restored soon, or at least this is what techcrunch reports.

Wireless carrier T-Mobile already announced plans to provide Sidekick users with a free month of data service and to offer a $100 gift card to those who might have permanently lost their data during the server outage. As for the lawsuits filed by users, Microsoft hasn't commented on it yet, and T-Mobile reportedly provided the following response: “T-Mobile does not comment on pending litigation. We are focused on helping our Sidekick customers recover from this recent service disruption and are continuing to support Microsoft's ongoing efforts to address and resolve the Danger platform issues.”