A serious bug within Norton Internet Security 2003 is responsible for the unexplained deletion of emails for some users. Symantec is aware of the problem with the latest version of its security suite and is working on a fix. It promises to deliver a patch through its LiveUpdate automatic updating facility this week. The company has downplayed the significance of the problem by saying it affects a small number of people.
Symantec's product management team "has only received a handful of reports concerning this type of behaviour and we believe this to be an extremely rare occurrence", a spokeswoman told us. "The product is working as expected for the overwhelming majority of Norton Internet Security 2003 users." For the unfortunate "few", the consequences are serious as a Reg reader and email deletion victim explains. "People are having their email permanently and inexplicably deleted by a product that is supposed to be giving "Security". I've seen Virii do less damage than this." After using a separate utility (mailwasher) to cleanse his email of spam, he opened his email in Outlook XP only to discover dozens of identical emails with no time or date, no useful header information and all containing the following: "Symantec Email Proxy deleted the following email message". The deletion of these important emails, by a product that was supposed to protect them, has left our reader distinctly unchuffed.
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