Data belonging to 5,698 companies, including information used for their websites, have disappeared since a system failure last week knocked out a rental server service operated by a Yahoo Japan Corp. subsidiary. The Osaka based firm First Server posted on its website their inability to retrieve the data and is also is unable to rebuild the system. The firm plans to compensate the affected customers. The system failure occurred around 5 p.m. Wednesday when the company tried to upgrade the server system’s security.
First Server attributed the glitch to problems with its computer programming and operational procedures. It also lost the backup data. Firstserver became a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan in November 2004 and provides a rental server service for more than 50,000 customers. The Japanese Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is investigating the trouble, including whether the lost data involved private information.