There's a saying that gamblers will trust everybody, but they still cut the cards. No matter what the other side says, you should never rely on them. As the mobile world is moving towards a “cloud computing” solution for storage and access, the problems of Microsoft and the Danger/Sidekick product are a salient warning to back up your data or risk it being lost forever through no fault of your own.

For those of you not aware of the Sidekick, it's a feature phone that has proved incredibly popular in America and with a number of users in the UK. One of the key benefits is that it is always online, and will sync all the data on the device to a central server. When you get a replacement device or upgrade the model, just switch it on and you get all your data back. Hassle free backups, over the air, invisible to the end user... it's very much the “Advanced Technology appears like Magic” that Arthur C Clarke talked about.

And with the might of Microsoft behind the device, it's not like anything bad would happen to your data.

Wrong.

Over the weekend, it's become clear that, due to problems upgrading the server farm, all the data has been lost at their end. And it appears that when a Sidekick which is power cycled goes online and does the automatic sync the platform is famous for, all the user's information is wiped from the memory of the Sidekick. Unfortunately, Sidekick users have never really taken to backing up their own data. The latest models can save pictures from the camera to a memory card, and some contact info can be copied to the SIM card, but the whole selling point - that it was done online - has given everyone a comfort blanket that has now been ripped away.

Will the Sidekick still be a player in the market after this loss of customer data?

Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the actions of the company, this is a salient reminder of a simple fact. Your data is your responsibility. Yes it's nice that other companies will do their best to take care of it, but ultimately it's not up to them, it should be up to you.

One of the many hidden features (I say 'hidden', it's perhaps in a menu in an application that's launched by an icon that's two folders away from the main launcher screen with what could be a tiny sign that says “Beware of the Leopard”) is the “Back up phone memory” option in the S60 File Manager application. It does exactly what it says on the tin, taking all the data on your C: disk and dumping it onto your microSD card or your internal 'mass memory'.

The PC Suite software will also have the option to back up the same data to your desk-bound computer, again providing the user with their own safety net. Can I suggest that right now, as you read this, you go and back up your data somewhere that you control?

As more of us start to use online services in the cloud for syncing data, be it Nokia's Ovi Service, a system put in place by our network operators, or the numerous third party services that use the SyncML protocols over the air, we may be tempted to trust the magic that is happening in our smartphones. Don't. By all means use it as the primary method of data preservation, because 95 times out of 100 it will be fine. But that last little bit, the extra bit of gaffer tape you might need, that's a locally saved backup.

What's going to be more worrying for the industry as a whole is the damage that this will do to the idea of cloud computing, the idea that your data is safe, the goal of just moving everything online (such as Google Apps) and running your corporate email and document storage there is a noble one, but it's not a solution to everything. It has risks and, unlike the computer on your desk, those risks may not be what you have come across before. But they are there.

So let's spin that gamblers adage around for the 21^st century...

Trust every cloud, but back up your own data.

-- Ewan Spence, Oct 2009.