Turns out that OneCare isn't that great at protecting your system. It just might delete your email too, just for the heck of it.
Not only has OneCare recently come last in a
recent online comparative test of antivirus applications, it’s making life miserable for Windows users too by deleting their entire mailboxes in certain circumstances.
A bug which caused serious problems during OneCare’s beta builds has reared its ugly head again. After a system malware scan, OneCare quarantines – effectively deletes – Outlook and Outlook Express PST and DBX files.
Although a fix will be pushed out to OneCare subscribers, the official workaround is the same as it was during the beta program. Users are directed to register these file types as exceptions in OneCare’s quarantine filter so that they’re not picked up in the scan. Files which have been quarantined but not deleted can be recovered from within OneCare’s quarantine feature.
According to Microsoft, this problem affects Outlook 97/2000 and Outlook Express running on Windows XP. There’s no record yet of it affecting later versions of Outlook or Windows Vista.
Such a bug is certainly an embarrassment for Microsoft, and doesn’t bode well for OneCare’s ongoing uptake, but arguably that’s what beta testing is for – find the bugs and fix them. The fact that this bug was found was allowed to slip back in the final release is inexcusable. Beta testing only works through users’ goodwill, and the understanding that work done to identify problems early on results in a more polished final product.
This sort of massive slip-up is damaging to user confidence, and public perception of Microsoft’s products is bad enough without this sort of avoidable situation compounding the problem.
Maybe users need a malware application to protect themselves from OneCare?
UPDATE: Peter Watson, chief security advisor, Microsoft Australia has issued the following statement in response to APC's story:
On Sunday March 11, the Windows Live OneCare team released a new anti-malware engine that will fix the issue of OneCare erroneously quarantining certain Outlook .pst or Outlook Express .dbx files when infected files were detected within them. Windows Live OneCare customers whose PCs are connected to the Internet will automatically get this fix. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused our customers.
Again, OneCare will automatically update for this fix and customers will not need to take action to update themselves, but any customers who wish to manually confirm that they have received the most recent anti-malware engine can do so via the following steps:
1. Click “Change OneCare Settings” in the Main OneCare user interface
2. Click the “Logging” Tab
3. Click the “Create support log” button
4. Scroll down to the “Virus and Spyware Versions:” section and check your AM Engine version number. If the text says the numbers “2306” after the 1.1. number – such as AM Engine:(1.1.2306.0) – your engine has been updated already. If “2306” does not appear, your engine may still need updating. To update, ensure your computer is connected to the Internet, then click the “Check for updates” link in the main OneCare user interface and OneCare will download and install the fix.
For customers whose Outlook .pst and Outlook Express .dbx files had been quarantined prior to this fix and engine update, we continue to recommend the following steps to recover their email:
1. Close Outlook or Outlook Express
2. Click Change OneCare Settings in the Main OneCare user interface
3. Click on the Viruses & Spyware Tab
4. And then click on the Quarantine button and then select the pst or dbx file and then click on Restore.