Childcare app bods wipe users' data – then discover backups had been borked for a year

It was with "great regret" that Orbit, makers of an app for professional childcare services, informed its customers that it lost all of their data during a weekend site upgrade – before discovering their backups hadn't been working for a year.

Orbit describes itself as "a secure website" which provides "the Orbit Early Years app for Early Years Providers and Practitioners" available through Apple's App Store. The app is free but contains advertising directed at nursery managers and similar early years carers.

Ahead of the new school year, which begins next week, Orbit updated its website. To implement the new site it tried to populate the new and pristine set-up from its backup database of providers' details.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that "it was discovered the database back up had not been working properly over the past 12 months."

None of that data is recoverable, Orbit admitted, and its users have lost pretty much everything, including their observations about children in their care, though some images may have been retained.

Users took to Facebook to complain about the damage caused by the company's inability to check its backups. "I am absolutely fuming at this point," wrote one, who added: "I cannot even log in to find out what I've lost."

Explaining what has been lost, the company copped that it was "anything that has been created during the past year" including all new user accounts, all updates to existing accounts, all observation, assessment, and evaluations made, as well as information on guardians.

"All data is held securely in our EU Data Cloud and can only be accessed through the website and apps by registered and authorized users," Orbit's FAQ previously claimed.

Orbit has announced that its new site will not now be launched until the weekend, leaving users complaining that they are "already going to have weeks/months of work to redo without not being able to do my current work too!!"

The company had not responded to The Register's enquiries by the time of publication. ®