Live OneCare Munches User Email

March 13, 2007: In another embarrassing setback for Microsoft’s new security offering, the company has admitted that its Live OneCare suite has been inadvertently deleting email from Outlook and Outlook Express.

The revelation was made on Microsoft’s OneCare forum, and according to those affected if the program finds an infected message, instead of just quarantining the offender it quarantines or even flatly deletes the entire .pst or .dbx file – a users entire non-exchange personal email archive.

A forum administrator noted that the problem first appeared over a year ago and was then fixed, only to suddenly reappear now after version 1.5 was released.

Speaking to Computerworld, a Microsoft spokesman said that the company is working to address the issue, claiming that the problem seems to be happening because “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."

Microsoft says a fix for the issue will be included in the next Live OneCare update, scheduled for today.

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