First Sidekick Data Outage Lawsuits Filed
After T-Mobile Sidekick users lost data access for the better part of a week, then lost the information stored on their phones, it should surprise no one that the lawsuits are already flying. Though it is surprising that none of them were filed by Perez Hilton.
T-Mobile and Danger have offered Sidekick users a free month of data service and a $100 credit to be used however the customer likes. (We suggest using it toward a different smartphone.) The lawsuits seek to make a point, though.
"T-Mobile and its service providers ought to have been more careful the use of backup technology and policies to prevent such data loss" said Ira P. Rothken, an attorney working on that case. "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."
How much is the information on your smartphone worth? What is fair compensation? Is the best solution here a class action suit when the likely end result is a few dollars per user sometime in 2011?
Lawsuits filed over Sidekick outages [CNET]
PREVIOUSLY:
T-Mobile Sidekick Data Outage Turns Into Epic Customer Data Fail
T-Mobile Sidekick Data Outage: Day Three
(Photo: T-Mobile and TheGiantVermin)
Post a comment
Comments:
I would be amazed if there was nothing in the TOS that said we are not responsible for any lost data...
That's just a rumour floating from blog to blog with no real hard evidence. Yes it's possible, but I'd stop spreading such a rumour until there was evidence to back it up
Funny how when something that can ruin your business happens, it is always a disgruntled employee that has long since been fired, or soon will be.
@pxf9641: But do take into consideration how long they have been down. The business i'm in, we have a server break, we can turn it around in 3 business days with a new server freshly imaged. How long has these jokers been down? One week? Two? Here we are nearly a month with no Sidekick and they are churning around on the issue with no formal statement.
@JRules: They recovered the data. Which makes these lawsuits dumb. T-mobile is offering 100 dollar gift card and a month of free data. That is probably 160 bucks off their bill.
A lawyer is not going to even come close to getting a deal like that and a lawyer naturally will diminish any award by 30%.
I guess those suing want facts, but all they will end up doing is making a lawyer richer.
@Saboth: It's just as likely that somebody F***'d up and started the upgrade before backups we're complete, perhaps a miscommunication. There are any number of explanations here. Somebody screwed up royally, but I wouldn't be so quick to blame some faceless disgruntled employee
@Nighthawke: I will give you that, there is something we dont know about going on here, and that is suspicious. Hopefully there'll be a official statement soon, cause either way I'm sure there are people crying for blood
@pxf9641: I believe that Mr pxf9641 is probably correct. The most reasonable-sounding rumors are that it was a botched upgrade to a Storage Area Network (SAN) (see [www.engadget.com]). In short: Microsoft keeps Sidekick data on a fancy SAN, which they contracted with Hitachi Data Systems to upgrade. The upgrade failed, and the data was lost.
There is speculation that the backups were on a different part of the now-wiped SAN.
This all sounds reasonable. They just fucked up.
As my Dad always said:
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
@Nighthawke:Even if your business is close to what a global cell phone carrier is using, it's not as simple as just replacing hardware since there is a partnership with other companies. There are processes and boundaries that have to be watched, agreements to be adhered to, etc that could cause delay, but usually there are reasons for the implementation of these things.
MS has said that they actually can save most of the lost data. As in the high 90's of a percentile.
Oh great...they're just going to raise prices on everybody else. Maybe this time it's a "fleet management fee"...you know...for the management of their fleet of lawyers.
@Nighthawke: This is actually easy to do. You insert encryption in everything. So the backups, archives, and redundant servers are all encrypted. Everything gets decrypted through the master key which lives in just a few strategic places and is loaded as needed (e.g. when the decryption programs start up ... despite them actually processing huge amounts of data for days of running).
The logic bomb simply checks for some clue that the employee planting it is there or not. Once not there, it just wipes or encrypts the master key. Now when server processes start up, they fail to get a key and cannot run. Those that are still running have to carry more load. Eventually the load on the functioning servers exceeds their ability to handle it. If the tech staff doesn't realize what is happening, they may reboot them thinking they are just passing out due to memory leaks or whatever ... pushing all the load onto the few servers remaining.
If this were the thing happening (no idea if it was) they MAY have been able to do a recover by trying to get ALL the data out through the existing running servers. And that may not have even been possible. Even if it were possible, it could take days with the actual customer service being locked out during the effort.
And if the processes had a programmed expiration to force restarts, they could make all this cascade even faster into the death spiral.
The employee doing this may well have a backup copy of the master key in case his logic bomb (possibly installed long ago) were to be accidentally triggered by something. No doubt said key backup would itself be encrypted.
@Nighthawke: But how long does it take to turn around DATA (and all backups) that is encrypted, without an available decryption key.
Wow how stupid can people be. It never fails to amaze me that people don't back up their info. There is desktop software to back up your sidekick data. I have no sympathy for anyone who stores information on their phone that can not be replaced and they don't take steps to back it up else were. EVERY cell phone on the market today has the ability to back up contacts on a computer, so there is no excuse to not back it up. I really hope these law suits get thrown out.
If they manage to restore the data, how valid will these suits be?
A testament to T-mobile's service. Terrible.
Again, class action lawyers are taking the opputunity to make thousands or millions. They are the ones the bene the most, not the consumers. Government needs to regulate class action lawyers fees.
I've been a Sidekick user for over 5 years, and T-Mobile is at worst a run-of-the-mill mobile service provider. I even kept a lot of my data backed up, although I can tell you as a longtime user, this has NOT been easy.
Part of the problem for the company is that the T-Mobile part of the Sidekick service (phone, SMS) was working fine. T-Mobile IS in a rough spot, but they don't sell the Sidekick as a plain old phone, so they really need to step up to the plate and understand what they did to the users here. After all, T-Mo can sue Microsoft for violating the service-level agreement, but users have no real recourse in this situation.
I don't need to participate in a lawsuit or get some big $$ payout - I just want my early termination fee waived.
Here is the gist of what most folks believe has happened to T-Mobile:
It is believed that this event was the result of an disgruntled worker that was being released (IE, laid off). Said worker had planted a logic bomb in their sidekick servers that had insinuated into all their archives, including the backups. Then when the worker left, it went off, wiping the sidekick server and killing the backups.
Normally an outage the likes of server failure would take 24/48 hours to restore, but how this program killed everything, there really was nothing to fall back on.