On Sidekicks and Data Loss
To provide you with background on this story, I will link you to coverage of what is potentially the largest consumer data loss ever from both Engadget and T-Mobile (TMo). In short, what seems to be a large number of users of any Sidekick, who have, from my understanding, been without reliable service or access to any of their data in over a week are now being told that their data is almost certainly gone forever due to server failure at Danger, the company who manages the software side of the devices which are still made my Sharp (save for the Slide, made by Motorola). I’m going to try as best I can to ignore the fact for as long as possible that Danger is now owned by Microsoft and that this never happened before said acquisition.
I will call out Perez Hilton for a number of reasons, namely the fact that his website, twitter feed, and poor (immature) drawings composed, I assume, in MSPaint bother me to no end. He lost a ton of contacts and data, which is a travesty, but totally avoidable. My main issue is that he then proceeded to bitch about it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t totally disagree with him (as TMo should actually be giving users a refund for time without their data as well as making cutting ties with the company in whom I know I could never trust again with my money, let alone data) but I don’t agree with John Mayer, either (because those are as easy to lose as any data). I think my real problem with his whining was his reason for not backing up his data:
PS T-Mobile used to tell Sidekick users they personally didn’t need to back up their data. They did it for us. That’s why I never did. :-(
Really? That’s your reason? The ejaculatory-mouthed drawings make a lot more sense now: you’re just not an intelligent human being.
So there are a numerous points of failure in the Sidekick Data System. Perez is not the first Hilton to have a data problem with their Sidekick (warning, Nudity) since a simple password protects all that data, and people do not know how to make a password to save their lives as we all know. Another is that, while most GSM phones either default to storing numbers on the SIM cards which grant cellular service to the device, Sidekicks default the data to the device itself, and migration is not made simple. There is no “move…” or even “copy all data to SIM Card” option. There is an option users can set to store their contacts on the SIM card when added, but I do not believe this will migrate existing contacts over (if anyone has a sidekick and wishes to correct me, please feel free). I have not used a sidekick since November 1, 2007 but users from “my day” likely would have had their contacts stored on their devices already and not made the switch. And then, perhaps, the largest point of Failure in the whole system: no backups?
The true test of a backup system is what happens in the case of total data loss. I use Mac OS X’s built in Time Machine to backup data to an external drive. You can bet that if that drive failed, I would overnight a Seagate Barracuda to replace it at nearly any cost and backup my data again the next day. But if someone stole my iMac what would stop them from taking the little hard drive right next to it? This is a problem I don’t have themoney to solve, but when I upgrade my external from the 750GB I am currently using, to something a little more spacey (either a Seagate 2TB or a Drobo) I will surely do it. The plan is to backup my machine onto two drives, and keep one offsite (preferrably) or at least somewhere other than right next to my machine (another room, closet, in a drawer, etc.). Backups are great if your computer dies of natural causes. If my computer were consumed in a fire, what’s to say the data would be okay on my external?
You’ll notice something here: no one had to tell me that my data would be okay. Seagate tells me their drives have a five-year warranty, so they expect them to last for at least five years. Apple tells me that using Time Machine is all I need to keep things backed up. Common sense tells me that one set of backups should be enough but if you’re actually relying on your data that much, you really can’t be too safe. I personally cannot rebuild my 11k Music Library: there are too many bootlegs I taped, and too much time spent organizing it. Photos are traditionally harder to replace as music can be reobtained through ripping, downloading, etc. whereas photos are usually just your own, though you might have them somewhere. Documents, again, are very personal and not distributed. But to me, those things are small losses compared to my music library. Unfortunately for me, the priceless data in question weighs in at about 60GB. Pretty substantial amount of data to backup, as versus what Perez had: some pictures, and 2000 address book contacts. How much data is 2000 contacts?
Alexander William Bradley
x-(xxx)-xxx-xxxx
someemailaddress@gmail.com
I even gave him the benefit of the doubt and included a country code, and think my name is pretty long. 25 characters for my name. 15 for a properly formatted phone number. Regardless of the length of my email addresses, again, benefit of the doubt, I’ll throw in 50 characters for an email, to be safe. That means a name, number and email is 90 bytes, which makes an entire phone book a whopping 180k worth of data. Even if you printed your phone book as a PDF (something I did before leaving TMo and periodically throughout my year of little to no service most everywhere) the file should have been small enough to email. He could have likely exported to a CSV file and imported it into something useful (Google Contact Manager, I’m looking at you).
The point is that there is no excuse for not backing up data seen as this precious, but people do it all the time. It is frustrating as a technologist to have someone rely on me to bail out a dinghy with a paper cup, when I usually don’t even need to ask if they have life-vests: it’s just assumed that the computer will be okay and they don’t need to worry, but they don’t have backups if they’re wrong (and they usually are). I am not proposing a foolproof solution here, but have a few ideas and things I actively do:
- MobileMe iDisk – While I primarily use the service for syncing small bits of data across machines, it’s nice to know that this data is backed up somewhere, including my address book (which syncs with my phone). iDisk gives you 20GB of space and syncs pretty seamlessly through a mounted drive on your Mac.
- Time Machine – Again, Mac specific, but, if you have Leopard or Snow Leopard and are not using Time Machine, you’re out of your mind. A free utility I have been able to use countless times for contacts alone, this takes the guesswork out of creating backups. The last time my father’s Mac Mini gave him some troubles, I went and bought one for him. “Merry Christmas,” I said. “Your data’s safe now!” — This was in September, by the way.
- Dropbox – I have sung its praises before, but this thing’s the real deal. Imagine a 2GB Flash Drive you can’t lose that is on you no matter where you are so as long as you have the internet. It can also sync to numerous computers. I have it on four machines, so if they ever lose my data, unless they go crazy and start erasing data on your machines, my data’s safe in at least one location. Even if it wasn’t, Time Machine is backing up that data on one machine, and two are laptops, so I could just turn off wireless and grab my files (Yes, I have considered the possibility of a full Data Loss by Dropbox and syncing ‘nothing’ down to my machine. I’m paranoid).
I hope this information helps and teaches some people. This is serious stuff, guys. Don’t pull a Perez (or just don’t use Microsoft Products). I wonder if people thinking about using a Web Based, In-The-Cloud Office are watching this and making a mental note that Microsoft is not necessarily the best place to store all your files…
October 12th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Your point of view on backups is sound. However, do note that backing up your data with most of the systems you describe is pretty easy, and keeping the backups current ranges from relatively painless to completely automatic.
I’m a sidekick user, and have been for a number of years. I’d like to have kept my contacts and notes backed up, but the sk provides no reasonable interface for doing such a thing. The best you can get is emailing yourself individual vcards for each of your contacts. That works once, but maintaining such a backup is a thankless task. Moving contacts to the SIM isn’t a good solution, as the SIM can usually only hold 100 records, and then just a name and phone number (no address, no email, etc). You could also write everything down in a notebook, but that’s even harder to maintain and less reliable. A real answer to “why don’t you have a backup,” is more like, “it was nearly impossible for a reasonable person to do.”
The platform wasn’t designed with personal backups in mind. A big selling point was that T-Mobile/Danger were backing up your stuff. I sorta resent the insinuation that all sk users without a personal copy of their contacts are morons. Backups were were a service that I was explicitly paying for. Companies outsource this kind of data security all the time, and it often makes a lot of sense.
I keep backups of my mac using a hard drive on my desk at work. This guards me from reasonable data loss – my house burns down, someone steals my laptop, my internal disk fails, etc. Theft, small disasters, and hardware failure happen all the time, and it’s reasonable for most people to plan for them. A huge multinational dropping more than half a million users’ data on the floor? That’s a bit less common, judging by the reaction I’m seeing around the Internet. I don’t think you can really conflate the two.
Put another way, it’s reasonable to assume that Danger/Microsoft would have kept a second copy someplace. This is what I figured, from my own background maintaining large-scale enterprise storage for mission-critical data. We all know that backups are non-optional in those situations. I couldn’t imagine any company putting a multimillion-dollar revenue stream at risk like that. It’d be ludicrously negligent, right? So, since I had so little to lose (some phone numbers) and they had so much to lose, it made sense to let them to do the work.
But yeah, I probably won’t ever make that mistake again. Do note, however, that many very intelligent, thoughtful people with years’ experience with just these same issues are in the same boat as Mr. Hilton is now. Did you backup your sidekick contacts when you had one?
October 12th, 2009 at 11:36 am
No, Sidekicks were not designed with personal backups in mind, and perhaps I was too young at the time (I got my Sidekick at age 17) to know about any of this stuff, but I never saw the “cloud” aspect of this to be a big deal, or even a selling point. I had an LG vx6000 from Verizon, and wanted to IM, Text, Email and surf the web from where ever. I had my sidekick with a data plan only (a wonderful deal) and so I had two cell phones. I kept each address book updated, and used Verizon’s free (with an online account) Backup Assistant to backup contacts there. Similar to my desktop backup situation right now, I feel that I am taking adequate steps to protect that data; by the way, those 11,000 songs I mentioned are also stored on _another_ external hard drive on which I store larger files, and if I really needed to, I can pull them off my iPod Classic, too. So I have quite a few ways to retrieve that data.
Yes, hardware failure and theft happens all the time. The problem is that if you rely on a three digit passcode to protect your data, and someone happens to get in, you’re screwed. If every user thinks “wow, It’d be terrible if my phone got stolen, I should have a backup of this stuff!” this would not be such a big deal, but my argument is that it is _not_ reasonable for most people to plan. Rather, it is peoples’ opinions that, for some reason, Car/House Insurance is worth it, but insuring their data is not, though the cost is much less and risk is no less real. What Microsoft essentially did was assist users in losing their data, without being able to help them get it back. Now, resourceful users who were paranoid enough to distrust these promised backups are in the clear, and everyone else is not.
You go so far as to say “it is reasonable to assume” and that’s the exact reason why I’m typing to you right now from an iMac: it really isn’t reasonable to assume anything when you’re dealing with Microsoft. I think they’re getting better, but all the things I really, truly enjoy about Windows 7 are small steps towards gaining back trust they lost before Vista even came out. All I need to hear is that they really care more about their profits than their customers’ data for me to take another huge step back.
So in short, when I had a sidekick, my data was thoroughly backed up. My numbers were stored on another cellphone which I had on my person at all times. That cellphone backed up to Verizon’s servers every day at 5pm. AND I went online every 2-3 months and printed my Sidekick address book as a PDF so I could be sure I had a paper record of my contacts. I still have a printed copy in a binder. I did not use calendars, but emailed pictures to myself on a frequent basis if I cared enough about them.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:47 am
Hmm, well I must say, you’ve gone on for quite a long time about backups. It’s interesting to note your concern for those who don’t enlist auxiliary backups services. However the truth is, a raindrift explains, this is an unusual phenomenon.
a) Users expect their data to be safe. Walk in to best buy and try to buy a computer. Their service agents will “highly recommend” an external hard drive with some backup software. They’ll even set it up for you. Most people never come face to face with actually using backups software (or seeing the need for it). If you use web services backups are promised, if you use phone services, backups are also promised.
b) You’re redundancy model great, but people rely on IT to take care of IT things. Take the example of Apple, they understand backups are important so they make backups transparent to the users. Perez has every right to be angry with Danger/Microsoft/Hatachi/T-Mobile or whomever.
I know this is a bad example but do you keep two differently-serviced phones with you because you mistrust AT&T’s 3G network promise?
October 20th, 2009 at 2:49 am
On an unrelated note, your blog needs more pictures. :)