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T-Mobile UK experienced earlier this week a massive breach into its data base: a yet undisclosed number of customers records have been stolen and, most likely, sold to an unidentified third party.

“The number of records involved runs into the millions and it appears that substantial amounts of money changed hands”, said in a document Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) acknowledging the breach. The data included customers’ personal information and contract expiration dates. The UK’s Data Protection Act prohibits the selling of data without prior permission from the owner. The ICO said in its report that it believes T-Mobile competitors used the information to call customers prior to the expiration of their contracts and offer them deals with a new operator.

Well. guess what: the thief was a T-Mobile UK insider, not some random hacker looking for easy money. This fact highlights the problem of the threat posed by insiders, especially during an uncertain global economy, which has resulted in layoffs and mergers.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s storage system was designed, one of the questions was: who can access the data our uses will upload? The answer we came up with was no one except its legitimate owner. Our service provides a digital safety box only the user can access. There is no way an insider could ever enter a Forever account and share its content with a third party. It is just impossible.

That is because there are three separate keys to decrypt the information and each one is in a different Swiss DNA Bank’s trustee hands. Because your privacy is always our priority.

The beginning of this week left many Americans stranded without any sidekick support. More specifically, I’m talking about T-Mobile’s phone data backup failure.

“Sidekick” is a celebrity’s-pick telephone and e-mail device distributed by T-Mobile, brought to fame by a very-out-there advertising campaign which featured Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg and other big celeb names.

The data stored in these phones was actually remotely hosted by Microsoft’s servers, which means that users’ phonebooks, SMS, e-mails, etc.,  were not stored inside the phones themselves but rather, on cloud servers. Very convenient at first glance: you could have hundreds of names, numbers, addresses and messages handy without actually over-challenging your device. All you needed to retrieve data was an Internet connection.

But apparently, the servers crashed. And for some reason, still undisclosed, the backup servers crashed as well. Or at least someone forgot to press the “Save” button.

So, thousands of users woke up to a blank phone.

T-Mobile stated there is apparently nothing they can do to retrieve the lost data, and it is refunding a paltry $20 to those struck by the Web lightening.

What does that tell us?

It tells us that there is no such thing as a too-expensive or over-protected data backup system. Knowledge, information and contacts are some of our most precious assets and must be regarded as such.

This is why we here at Swiss DNA Bank never get tired of stressing the fundamental importance of safe and guaranteed backup.

The idea of the revolutionary storage of data forever came from my personal need to feel secure about information storage. I wanted to know that my memories and my biological mark were in a safe place that my heirs could access one day.

There are many other backup services out there. But where are their servers physically located? Who is managing them? What happens in case a disaster hits the storage location?

These are questions that we should ask ourselves when we put our data in someone else’s hands.

Can they provide you with straight answers and Swiss-quality assurances?

Well, we certainly can.

Luca Boschin

COO Swiss DNA Bank