Posted 10/16/09 at 01:46:42 PM by Paul Lilly

Put away the pitchforks for a moment, because that whole data loss thing involving the Sidekick and Microsoft's Danger unit might not be the Redmond company's fault after all. So who is to blame? Oracle, Linux, and Sun, Microsoft said in not so many words.

"Sidekick runs on Danger's proprietary service that Microsoft inherited when it acquired Danger in 2008. The Danger service is built on a mix of Danger created technologies and third party technologies," Microsoft explained to TGDaily. "Microsoft's other cloud computing projects are totally separate from the Danger Service and do not rely on the Danger Service technology."

There's actually a whole lot more to the story for anyone who cares to read through it all, including a possible sabotage scenario. In short, this could be a situation where it was simply easier to point the finger at Microsoft, justified or not. And more than just pointing fingers, the Redmond company finds itself on the receiving end of two class-action lawsuits alleging that it, along with T-Mobile, failed to "adequately ensure the safety, security, and availability of the data belonging" to Sidekick users.

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Posted 10/12/09 at 08:25:47 PM by Ryan Whitwam

It turns out that Sidekick users aren’t the only ones losing data this week. Several thousand Facebook users that have been unable to access their accounts since last week are finally seeing their profiles return. The only catch? The data from recent profile updates has been lost.

The outage was the result of, “a technical issue with a single database,” according to Facebook. Luckily, only a small fraction of Facebook’s users were affected. Unluckily, Facebook has so many users that the ‘small fraction’ works out to about 150,000. When the profiles were restored, Facebook presented users with a message that read in part, “We have done our best to restore your account to its most recent state, but some data and settings may not be current.” This could include pictures, status updates, and friend list changes, just to name a few.

Overall, the data loss was relatively minor. No profiles have gone missing entirely. So at least on that front they’re ahead of Danger/Microsoft. Most of the complaints arising from the incident seem to revolve around Facebook’s customer service. They said very little about the situation until just recently. A Facebook rep indicated that the company wanted to get the specifics figured out before providing potentially incorrect information. If you rely on Facebook, how much downtime is acceptable? Would you consider keeping important contact info or pictures on it?

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Posted 07/11/08 at 04:56:55 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Investor's Business Daily says "Hackers always are on the lookout for the most vulnerable spot on your personal computers. These days, that weakest link might be your flash thumb drive." They're easy to exploit by malware and easy to lose. How do you cope with the security risks and potential data loss of the humble thumbdrive? Are you encrypting your thumbdrives?

For a closer look at thumbdrive security, and a chance to give us your tips, see us after the jump.

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