Cell phone provider may not recover info

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T-Mobile Sidekick users lost personal information such as contact names, phone numbers and digital photos after a server failure at Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft.

Sophomore broadcast major Jeannette Reyes had more than 400 phone numbers stored in her T-Mobile Sidekick Slide. Last Friday, all of those numbers disappeared along with her wallpaper and calendar.

“I called T-Mobile and told them what was going on, and they told me it was going on nationally with all Sidekicks, and that they would work to restore the contacts, which obviously never happened,” Reyes said. ÿ

T-Mobile announced on its Sidekick forum page Saturday it would be unable to recover customers’ personal data.

“Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.”

T-Mobile said it will continue to work in hope of discovering a way to recover the information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is “extremely low.”

“I’ve had problems before, but they always say the Danger network is reliable, and you’re always going to get your contacts back,” Reyes said.

A media representative for T-Mobile said retrieval for data that was lost is limited only to customers who either conducted a hard reset or removed their battery.

But a press release from T-Mobile urges customers not to remove their battery during the service disruption because it will risk the loss of any personal information that may remain on the device.

Contact technology reporter Kristyn Soltis at [email protected]