Microsoft's antivirus deletes users' e-mails
By David Meyer, ZDNet UK
12 March 2007 06:28 AM
Microsoft has admitted that its Live OneCare security suite has been accidentally deleting some users' Outlook and Outlook Express e-mails.
According to postings on Microsoft's OneCare forum, erasures have been caused when the antivirus program finds a virus in an e-mail attachment. Instead of then quarantining that single e-mail, users have reported that entire .pst or .dbx files -- the personal folder where non-Exchange Server users' messages and other details are kept -- have been quarantined or, in some cases, even deleted.
One user commented on the forum: "Is there a chance to recover it? If not, OneCare will have done more damage than any virus in my 30 years of active computing." Forum postings indicate, however, that recovery is possible in some cases, where the .pst or .dbx file is still available in OneCare's quarantine facility.
Stephen Boots, a forum administrator, commented that he was "very unhappy about this problem as it was reported over a year ago and fixed in the 1.0 release", adding: "It never appeared throughout the beta, but suddenly appeared when 1.5 was released".
In a statement reported on Computerworld, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company was "working to address an issue where the antimalware engine for OneCare is erroneously quarantining Outlook .pst files or Outlook Express .dbx files, when the .pst file or .dbx file contains an infected attachment". The spokesperson added that a fix would be included in the next OneCare update, which is due on 13 March.
OneCare has been hit this year by ongoing criticism, having only days ago failed to achieve certification in an independent test of security products. Shortly before that, it emerged that the product did not sufficiently protect users of Microsoft's Vista operating system against malware.
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David Meyer reported for ZDNet UK from London
Screenshot of Live OneCare running on Windows Vista.
Microsoft’s officials admitted that the company’s Windows Live OneCare security suite has been accidentally deleting e-mails of those users that worked with Outlook and Outlook Express.

Microsoft’s OneCare forum included postings that stated the cause of message deletion. Thus the issue occurred thanks to an antivirus application that finds e-mails containing viruses. The problem with the software was that the antivirus, instead of deleting or quarantining the hazardous e-mail, deleted all messages from the personal folder.

The forum, however, gave hope in a post saying that some messages might be recovered but only in case they were quarantined. Thus users are able to find those e-mails in OneCare’s quarantine facility.

The administrator of the forum, Stephen Boots, outlined that he was very unhappy with the issue which, he said, appeared over a year ago and the company thought it fixed the problem with the release of 1.5 version. Boots said that the beta version of the program worked fine but when the final version was launched the problem occurred once again. 

According to the statement, reported by the spokesperson of the software giant, Microsoft is now working to fix the problem and release an updated version of OneCare on March 13.

OneCare was criticized after it failed to pass an independent test of security products that provided a certain certification. In addition to this the program did not provide enough protection for Windows Vista users.