Sidekick customers file lawsuits

Sidekick

The lost data has been recovered, but it hasn't stopped a number of suits being filed against Microsoft, T-Mobile and Danger after a fault hit Sidekick users in the US last week.

US T-Mobile Sidekick customers lost data over the weekend, following a glitch in servers owned by Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, which was responsible for backing up the data in the cloud.

A few days later, it was confirmed that the data, thought to be lost forever, had been recovered.

However, a report on internetnews.com has listed a number of suits filed by users in the US regardless of the recovery situation.

Maureen Thompson of Snellville has filed a class action suit in a Northern District California court claiming false advertising by T-Mobile, Danger and Microsoft, as the companies claimed to securely back up data stored on the user's handset.

In the claim, Thompson said the cloud computing offering from the companies is supposed to keep data safe but, as the suit points out, "Sidekicks are essentially useless should Microsoft/Danger fail to provide these services."

The suit continued: "T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger have touted this mode of operation as a benefit to consumers because it means that user data can simply be sent by Microsoft/Danger servers to a new Sidekick should an existing Sidekick become lost or destroyed."

Another suit has been filed by Oren Rosenthal from Texas at Washington King County court. He only names T-Mobile as the defendant but again claimed that the company used deceptive advertising by not clearly stating the risk of losing personal data in the cloud.

Microsoft is currently said to be "working round the clock" to restore all the lost data but a statement from the company is expected by Saturday at the latest to update users on its progress.

Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.