NEW YORK — Owners of Sidekick phones might have lost all the personal information they put on the device, including contact numbers, because of a failure of servers that remotely stored the data.
The incident is a huge blow to the reputation of the Sidekick and is a reminder of the dangers of trusting a single provider to safeguard information.
The phones are made by a Microsoft subsidiary and sold by T-Mobile, which say many Sidekick owners’ information is “almost certainly” gone. T-Mobile is offering customers $20 to refund the cost of one month of data usage on the phone.
Microsoft spokeswoman Debbie Anderson said Monday that there was still a chance some of the lost user data could be restored from a backup system. The Associated Press; AP photo
