Severe Data Loss Caused by GitHub Copilot – Request for Acknowledgment and Compensation

[NachoBecerra]

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I am writing to report a very serious incident caused by GitHub Copilot that resulted in the irreversible deletion of over 10 years of personal photos and videos — memories of my family, children, and irreplaceable life moments.

While coding in VSCode with Copilot enabled, a suggestion was auto-completed and executed that ran the following command:
cmd /c "rmdir /s /q \"d:\Repositorios\tournament-app\src\app\api\tournaments\[id]\""
This deleted my entire D: drive, including personal folders not even related to the project.

I attempted data recovery using multiple tools (including EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, at $99 USD), but no photos or videos were successfully recovered, even after hours of advanced scans. The emotional and material loss is devastating.

I am requesting:

• Formal acknowledgment of this incident and its cause.
• Reimbursement of recovery tool costs ($99 USD).
• Compensation for lost time (10+ hours of recovery and system scanning).
• A preventive plan to avoid such catastrophic suggestions in Copilot.
• Compensation for the irreparable loss of personal data with immeasurable sentimental value.

I also attempted to contact copilot-feedback@github.com, but all messages were blocked.
I’m sharing this here because I deserve a response, and because this could happen to anyone else using Copilot without realizing the risk.
Please take this seriously. I'm willing to provide logs, recovery screenshots, and any other required evidence.

Thank you.

[NachoBecerra]

evidencia.txt
HISTORIAL_CHAT_COMPLETO.md

[dev-mohamed-ayman]

Hi there,

I'm truly sorry to hear about this devastating experience. Losing such irreplaceable memories is heartbreaking, and I can only imagine the frustration and emotional toll this must have taken on you.

While GitHub Copilot is a powerful tool, incidents like this highlight how critical it is to always review any suggested commands — especially destructive ones — before executing them. That said, this also shows a clear need for improvements on GitHub’s side regarding Copilot’s handling of dangerous commands.

Thank you for sharing this transparently. I hope GitHub staff will take immediate action to:

• Review this case and acknowledge the damage,
• Investigate how such a suggestion made it through,
• Provide financial and emotional compensation as appropriate,
• And improve Copilot’s safeguards moving forward.

If GitHub staff need more visibility on this, I’d recommend also tagging @github or creating an issue on Copilot's Feedback Repository if possible.

Again, I wish you the best in recovering whatever data you can. And thank you for raising awareness — your story may help prevent future harm to others.

Stay strong.

[NachoBecerra]

Tagging @github here for visibility. I would greatly appreciate an official response from the GitHub Copilot team, as this case involves irreversible personal data loss caused by a Copilot-generated destructive command.

This deserves urgent review, and ideally, a concrete response regarding acknowledgment and appropriate compensation.

[davevad93]

Hi @NachoBecerra,

Given the magnitude of the incident and the amount of data you have lost, I don't know if it can be solved by simply opening a discussion in the Community Discussion as such incidents should always be escalated directly to the support team. So I recommend you also contact support by opening a ticket here, select “Other” and explain what happened, as well as attaching any proof you have of the incident.

Note that support can take time to respond, sometimes weeks or even months. I hope that given the magnitude and the loss of personal data suffered, you'll get a proper response asap.

[wnsdn517]

Hello, were you able to get compensated? I ended up looking into this because I encountered the same or a similar situation today. My phone was rooted, and I was working on an LSPosed module completely unrelated to the issue. Suddenly, Copilot executed rm -rf /data/ without my consent, wiping out all app data and personal data, including unbacked-up files.

[NachoBecerra]

Unfortunately, no. I was never compensated, and I was not able to recover the data I lost.
I tried several recovery methods and tools, but a large amount of the deleted content was impossible to restore. Among the lost files were personal photos and videos accumulated over many years — content that is simply irreplaceable and has an immeasurable sentimental value to me.
After what happened, I completely stopped using GitHub Copilot. I have never used it again, and I have no intention of doing so in the future. Losing that level of trust in a tool, especially one capable of executing terminal commands, is not something I can simply overlook.
Personally, I moved to Anthropic and Claude, and based on my experience I would recommend doing the same without hesitation.
What disappointed me almost as much as the data loss itself was GitHub's response. I contacted them, explained the seriousness of what had happened and raised my complaints, but in the end I felt that GitHub simply washed its hands of the situation and ignored the real consequences of the incident.
There was no meaningful acknowledgement of the damage, no compensation, and no satisfactory resolution.
For me, the whole way this was handled was an absolute disgrace.
I'm very sorry to hear that something similar has happened to you. I know exactly what it feels like when files that cannot be replaced disappear because of a command you never intended to execute.