A class action lawsuit has been filed against T-Mobile, subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, and Microsoft alleging that these companies lost most all the contacts, appointments, photos and other data stored by as many as one million users of the popular T-Mobile Sidekick line of mobile phones.
The T-Mobile Sidekick data service went down in early October and then T-Mobile admitted that Microsoft's Danger, Inc, subsidiary, which is responsible for the Sidekick data service, lost most all of the personal data it was entrusted with protecting, and that it was highly unlikely it would recover any data.
The lawsuit alleges that T-Mobile, Microsoft, and Danger actively marketed the Sidekick mobile phones as automatically backing up all the data that users would store, such as contacts, appointments, photos and more, and then failed to follow through on these promises. According to the lawsuit, most Sidekick users have "suffered a complete and catastrophic" loss of data.
The suit is brought by Maureen Thompson of the Atlanta area. Ms. Thompson owns a Sidekick used primarily by her daughter, Káhryn Thompson-Gayle, an aspiring model, singer, and songwriter who used her Sidekick to store personal and business contacts, appointments, and even irreplaceable song lyrics not stored anywhere else. Ms. Thompson bought the Sidekick for her daughter primarily because T-Mobile promised that any data would be protected and available no matter what happened to the phone.
The class action seeks injunctive relief and monetary damages for failing to protect Sidekick user data, and false advertising.
