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T-Mobile apologizes for losing your Sidekick data: Will $100 help?

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Filed under: Technology

With cell phones doing more and more, the data stored on them becomes increasingly important. Even though phones have evolved to hold much more than phone numbers, not many people have a backup plan for the text messages, pictures and notes which now all sit on their phones. Users of the T-Mobile Sidekick found out just how much of a pain it can be when there is a failure in the system this past weekend, after an issue at Microsoft caused data to be permanently lost.

While Microsoft, who owns the company who that makes the Sidekick, and T-Mobile continue to work on recovering this important information they are reaching out to users to make up for sending their data to Valhalla.

Users who lost data permanently in the weekend data debacle have already received a month's worth of free data storage from Microsoft, and now T-Mobile has announced that it will give a $100 gift card for use on any T-Mobile transaction. Much like a lollipop given to a 3-year-old who has lost a favorite toy, the balm is hastily arranged: The gift certificates will be coming within 14 days to affected subscribers. This is all in addition to the already -announced option to cancel their contract with T-Mobile without any fees.


There's no excuse for a company to lose data in this magnitude but users should take steps to back up their data, even if your cell phone provider says you don't need to.

The biggest losses here aren't address books but pictures. Because of the way the sidekick works, data, like pictures aren't stored locally the same way they are on an iPhone or a BlackBerry, which means when Microsoft screwed, up millions of pictures went poof.

If you weren't affected by this issue, take a second and breathe a sigh of relief, and then take a few minutes to back up the important data on your cell phone. Copy your pictures to your computer so they can be backed up with the rest of your files and find out how to back up your phone book so you don't get hurt next time.
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