Said Microsoft: We’ve Recovered ‘Most’ Sidekick Data
A message under the name of Roz Ho, Corporate Vice President Premium Mobile Experiences, Microsoft Corporation appeared in Sidekick Forum stated:
“We have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.
We now believe that data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users. If your Sidekick account was among those affected, please continue to log into these forums for the latest updates about when data restoration will begin, and any steps you may need to take. We will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.”
The forum posting gave a brief explanation of what went wrong:
“We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up. We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way. This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data.”
While this is happening word came that a number of Sidekick owners are filing suit over the issue.
A man in Bakersfield, CA has issued a suit against Danger, on behalf of all others similarly situated, charges that, among other things, Microsoft and Danger failed to use reasonable care in handling Sidekick owners’ data and that the Sidekick was falsely 
advertised. That suit seeks monetary damages as well as an order requiring the companies to fix the Sidekicks and service or offer a full refund.
The man’s attorney, Ira P. Rothken, issued the following statement:
“T-Mobile and its service providers ought to have been more careful the use of backup technology and policies to prevent such data loss. We are hopeful that T-Mobile and the rest of the defendants will do the right thing, use this as an opportunity to redesign the system as a new standard for cloud computing storage, and provide full compensation for the data loss.”
Another suit, filed on behalf of Maureen Thompson “and all others similarly situated” seeks unspecified damages for Thompson and others who have lost data as a result of the recent Sidekick problems.
Thompson’s attorney Jay Edelson said in a statement:
“T-Mobile’s initial efforts to reimburse Sidekick users are a step in the right direction, but fail to sufficiently compensate Sidekick users for this disastrous loss of data. T-Mobile and Microsoft promised to safeguard the most important data their customers possess and then apparently failed to follow even the most basic data protection principles. What they did is unthinkable in this day and age.”
“Further complicating the data loss is the fact that Sidekicks, unlike iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones, are not designed to sync locally with a user’s personal computer without additional software and hardware,” the suit states. “This means that most users were not able to backup their data locally, but were encouraged and required to rely on Microsoft/Danger.”
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