Windows Live OneCare Can Eat Your Email 204
FutureDomain writes in to point us to a blog sponsored by PC Magazine, reporting about another problem with Windows Live OneCare. Apparently, it sometimes deletes the entire Outlook or Outlook Express .PST mailbox when it finds a virus in one of the messages. The only solution is to tell OneCare to exclude the entire Outlook mailbox. This is the software that came in last in antivirus tests. The trail of tears is ongoing over on the Microsoft forums.
trail of tears? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure about tears... (Score:2)
Try saying "OneCare" in a silly French accent (Score:2)
(Think Inspector Clouseau...)
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Re:trail of tears? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:trail of tears? (Score:5, Funny)
I smell an opportunity..... Quick! Someone post some linux evangelism there!
Re:trail of tears? (Score:5, Informative)
I am not a linux geek (Score:2)
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It sounds like bug 104956 in Kmail will cause it to lose messages -- in some cases, even entire folders full of messages -- if there are network problems or the program gets disconnected at the wrong time. Several people posted in there that they had lost mail folders that way, so it's obviously not terribly uncommon. To be honest, I would say that this sounds at least as bad as Microsoft's bug -- a network hiccup or a kicked cable could result in you losing your messages -- but insert standard comment ab
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It's a common comment because it's the whole point of free software. Bug 104956 is your fault because you haven't patched it yet.
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The severity of this bug would only match that of the microsoft bug if it deleted the imap folders on the server.
I take it that this is not the case?
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You are apparently wrong. Check out the link: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=104956 [kde.org] Around comments 35-36, they state that the copy on the server is deleted.
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I take it that this is not the case?
I was waiting for someone to presume that it'd be less severe than the Mircosoft bug, without actually doing a fact check. That same rhetoric that it's comparing apples to oranges shows up every time someone tries to give hard data. If the local copy is in any way corrupted, it'll think the IMAP folder should be empty and go on to delete every mail on the serve
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I'm not gonna go around strongly implying that windows never crashes though.
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Actually a recent version of Thunderbird would in fact hose your email.
Apparently a bug crept in that when Thunderbird's spam detector detected a certain kind of spam, it proceeded to mark ALL the mail in the mailbox for deletion on the next compaction.
For those people who compact on exit, that was seriously bad news.
However, the fix was also easy - since all mail is in text files rather than proprietary binary formats. You simply dumped the Thunderbird release with the bug and downgraded to the last releas
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I still have fond memories of the Polarbar Java email program. Great filtering options. But I had it disconnect from its data more than once too.
Linux evangelism? No, hard reality (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes Linux has a better record. But then so does everyone else. Go ahead, name the operating system with a security record equal or inferior to Windows over the last decade.
*BSD? Nope, even if you exempt OpenBSD *BSD has a far better record than anything Microsoft has released in the past decade. And OpenBSD wears the crown when it comes to security. Usability, scalability and such are legitimate counter concerns though and explain why OpenBSD hasn't conquered the world.
Linux? Regardless of the distribution, if it is a large enough operation to keep up with the torrent of errata teh universe of OpenSource/Free Software generates they have all done better then Microsoft when it comes to timely updates. And with the bonus of the existence of "Enterprise" distributions for a good part of the decade that focus on errata updates that won't have unrelated breakage.
Apple? Their record with OS 8 and OS 9 beat Microsoft and OS X just upped their game.
Sun? HP? IBM? Please.
I'm not saying anyone should be proud of their security history and methodology, all software currently sucks ass. But since we have to use something NOW the question is why is the worst vendor on 90% of the world's machines?
What I'd like to see is a major concerted effort to raise software quality over adding new features. Engage the CS departments in teh universities to have all students audit some code. After all, most operating systems these days allow access to the source. And auditing real code would be a good experience for em. They would see first hand how wretched much of the code actually in use is firsthand. And if legends are writing that stuff they just might listen a bit more when when the prof is badgering about not hotdogging in the belief they are too leet to make those 'idiot' mistakes.
And for the Linux world I'd like to see the major distros come together to take every package not currently at 1.0 and finish em or dump em. Then stabilise the codebase, audit the crap out of it and then freeze them, only accepting bug fixes. And a nice side effect is they would all have the SAME version. The original project can still release new versions but it won't get integrated into a major stable distro until they announce a new feature complete and AUDITED version. Seriously, is there anything else that needs to go into glibc? So why not stabilize it, sudit it and then freeze it? We need a trusted core that we don't have to update several times per year. As computers become central to our civilization we need them to work a lot more than we need shiny new features.
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Because users say they want security, but in reality want convienience. People want to be able to just click a program and run it, and expects the computer to figure out if this is safe or not, and whether this trojan was something they actually wanted to run, or if they were just trick
Re:trail of tears? (Score:4, Funny)
Lost email (Score:3, Interesting)
I advocate a training program for those people: once each year they should practice archiving everything they might ever want to save to one CD. Just one typical data CD. Not a DVD. One single CD. Anything which doesn't make it to the CD is random number filled.
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Why? Is there a downside to having a large collection of "stuff"?
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Re:trail of tears? The Unemployment line (Score:2)
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Speaking of tears, I had a good laugh when I read this:
I really don't intend to be mean, but this just took me back a few years to when I was using Windows. I had totally forgotten about updates that require reboots (well, kernel updates do, even on Linux). Amusing, to me at least.
Anyhow, OneCare has bugs, not that surprising really, all
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Well, I learned something just now, I had no idea that that was a US cultural reference; I am, in fact, not from the US (lived there as a child for a few years, decades ago). Actually I didn't even think it might be a reference, so I di
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My mum uses Outlook and she would be furious if a email got in and OneCare deleted every email.
Fortunately for her I wont allow malware like OneCare near any of our computers.
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Yeah, right.
You've obviously never had a client lose his PST file, right?
You have no idea how the thought of losing their last thousand emails affects some people.
Especially when those emails contain the email addies - and purchase orders - of every customer of that client.
Re:trail of tears? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Now I'll have to pay full price for viagra. I consider the two to be on par.
Re:trail of tears? (Score:4, Funny)
Say what you want about MS, I don't think they have started to tread near the "genocide" area yet.
I see you haven't tried to upgrade to Vista yet.
This is just another in a long series of failues (Score:3, Insightful)
If those idiots don't screw the world up by their own incompetence first they are going to get Windows Update 0wn3d and allow someone malevolent to wreak even worse havok on the world.
Seriously, I can't understand how any Microsoft product is permitted to be used in any role where failure isn't an option. Finance, military, medical, etc should have imposed a ban a decade ago, forbidding the stuff from even being connected to a network port inside the secure inner firewall. Instead we are installing the stuff into the engine room on our warships, giving it sole control of the propulsion system.
This is insanity on a global scale. A lot of people even seem to understand the danger yet are too afraid to speak up loudly enough to be heard.
Re:This is just another in a long series of failue (Score:2)
I can't understand why software is permitted to be used in any role where failure isn't an option.
But I get your point.
Re:This is just another in a long series of failue (Score:2)
I mean, I work for state government and the majority of the people running the systems just don't know computers very well. It sucks. So, their comfort zone is Windows, because it APPEARS easier to manage. (Of course, it's not, it's just as com
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So, their comfort zone is Windows, because it APPEARS easier to manage. (Of course, it's not, it's just as complicated as anything else when you look past the pretty start button.)
I need to disappoint you:
- My experience with my students shows, that they know Windows less than anything else (they only think they know it, because of the colourful start button and stuff).
- My experience as sysadmin (in both worlds) shows, that W
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Plus, I don't see how you proved me incorrect in any way - people know Windows more then, say, UNIX. As a general rule. They use it at home, they can install software, they can add devices and device drivers. That's certainly *more* then any other operating system, right?
You actually agree with me for the most part. Like I said, it's not less complicated then other systems once you get past the start button, which insinuates "past pre-fab admin tasks" without as many
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You wouldn't. Maybe a problem of language. I tried to rhetorically endorse what you said. Probably I should take an extra course in writing.
Though I need to bow before you as the slightly - if only a few hours - more senior
Re:This is just another in a long series of failue (Score:2)
For a single user desktop machine, there is no reason not to. If you're account ever is compromised, someone can just wrap your shell with something that uploads everything you enter, and the next time you su to root, you're toast. How many unix users do you know who switch to the login screen everytime they need to do so
And they say FOSS doesn't get professional testing (Score:2)
Well, here's an example of how it can go wrong, no matter who you are. Of course, we're never surprised when Microsoft has a bug. It's really funny to me, actually. Huge company--
Re:And they say FOSS doesn't get professional test (Score:2)
Is this really true in a general sense? Obviously the "darling" FOSS projects do, but that's a very small percentage of the whole.
Re:And they say FOSS doesn't get professional test (Score:2)
Re:And they say FOSS doesn't get professional test (Score:2)
I understand what you're trying to say by "FOSS software gets more intense testing." You mean, basically, that FOSS software gets looked at by a lot of developers and thus errors tend to be spotted.
But that isn't "intense testing".
In fact, one of my pet peeves with most of the Linux distros these days is the pathetic quality of their testing. I mean, they are letting really STUPID bugs slip through that should have been caught with even a minimal amount of testing.
As an example, Kubuntu shipped their instal
Linux users! Let's show some solidarity (Score:5, Funny)
Don't just sit there feeling smug! Every now and again, when you have a free moment, delete your mbox file, or the directory where the mail client of your preference stores its data. That'll go a long way towards helping Windows users to stop seeing us as arrogant and aloof and let them know we share their pain.
(And if you're really feeling altruistic, knock up a shell script which turns your machine into a spam-spewing zombie).
Re:Linux users! Let's show some solidarity (Score:5, Funny)
>
> knock up a shell script which turns your machine into a spam-spewing zombie
See, that's the problem with Linux. You have to do all that extra work to get functionality which just plain works under Windows.
c.
It's The Lt. Ripley Virus Scanner (Score:5, Funny)
PST file (Score:5, Insightful)
At least other MUAs usually have a separate file for each folder.
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when you receive a mail and your inbox is deleted, you "only" lose the recently received mails and not all those valuable mails you saved in the past.
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Users tend to create a lot of sub-folders, and folders in sub-folders. While moving things around is usually as simple as drag-and-drop, having all of them stored in one file is great.
Re:PST file (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think the PST database file is a fantastic concept. I've used Outlook and the PST file for slightly more than a decade now, through five versions of Outlook. I've moved it around through multiple workstations, sometimes bringing it onto my laptop for just a week, sometimes sharing it between two compute
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And I can also say the same for everyone I've ever seen using Outlook in a personal and business environment. At word, Outlook 2000 needed to run the Inbox Cleanup Tool every now and then if there was a bad write, but it always recovered perfectly.
Good for you.
I have been using various POP3
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And if you look at the details of any program which directly manipulates Outlook data, you'll find one of the system requirements is to have Outlook installed on the machine. You don't have to use Outlook to view the data, but some library or
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In other words, why *wouldn't* the user have Outlook installed if he is running some kind of PST-modifying program?
And don't say "because he's migrating away from Outlook" because there are utilities that will migrate emails and other objects from a PST file without having Outlook installed.
On the contrary, having Outlook accessible via VBA allows programmers to
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http://sourceforge.net/projects/dmailer [sourceforge.net]
I'm sure code can be swiped somehow.
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Ok, PST is a horrible implementation of a database, but don't knock the concept for one bad example.
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Lots of people, including Microsoft, have claimed that in the past. Few have been successful in actually implementing it (IBM S/38?).
Of course, a database implemented as a big file with internal structure will have internal fragmentation just like data stored in a number of smaller files can lead to fragmentation of the filesystem. Here you are just comparing the quality of the f
OneCare deletes nothing (Score:5, Informative)
Then, get a good AV package - or better yet, just exercise some fucking common sense and don't open that "Re: Malaca Superfund Stranded" email from "Roberta Plantagenet~=%" that has a "postcard.exe" attachment.
so effectively (Score:2, Insightful)
or can you imagine a serious company (serious companies don't give admin access to their workers) to send a technician to EVERY WORKER who just RECEIVES an email with a virus infected file to recover his inbox from quaranaine?
hey, why not piss off vista using companies by sending emails with attatched virusses (or was the plural virii?) to all their workers? man, if every worker loses all his emails multiple times or technicia
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If you read through some of the posts on Microsoft's forum, you would find there are users who have had their file deleted one time and quarantined another. Since they were able to find it when it was quarantined, I would assume that they know what they are talking about when they say it was deleted.
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MS's software is broken anyway
You are so leet.
Boda Bing... (Score:2, Funny)
Running theme with Microsoft's "security"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Example 1:
Problem- Malware has carte blanche in XP to do damn near anything if it's run from an account with admin privileges.
Solution- UAC in Vista. ("You are moving your mouse cursor. Cancel or allow?")
Solution Sucks Because- UAC is so friggin' annoying with the popups that people will either shut it off or get in the habit of blindly clicking "OK," which means they are likely to give malware carte blanche to do damn near anything.
Example 2:
Problem- Viruses.
Solution- Windows OneCare Antivirus.
Solution Sucks Because- One infected email can cause your whole inbox to go bye-bye.
Great job, guys! The five years it took you to get this stuff perfect was really worth it!
Re:Running theme with Microsoft's "security"? (Score:5, Funny)
While still incredibly annoying, at least it's a SLIGHT step up from what we used to have. "Your mouse cursor has moved. Windows must be restarted for the change to take effect."
You have to wonder... (Score:2)
On a side note - Backup your files (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, this is off-topic. Yes, OneCare sucks if it deleted someones email.
If you don't backup your data you will lose it someday. It's not a question of "if" it is "when". Your hard drive will eventually crash!
I feel so sorry for people that encounter this. My business provides remote backup via the web & we try to help people prevent events like this, but it doesn't matter. I think all of our remote backup customers have previously experienced data loss.
Hardly an unheard of problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop tagging all MS-related articles defective... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, Microsoft has a lot of DRMed software, with Vista being the granddaddy of them all, but not everything Microsoft makes is defective by design. And in this particular case, the defect appears to be a bug rather than intentional anyway. So, please, save the "defectivebydesign" tag for situations where it's really warranted. Sure, it may be an amusing term, but when you use it where it doesn't apply, it waters down its meaning for the situation it was intended to be applied to: DRM.
Re:Stop tagging all MS-related articles defective. (Score:2)
Most of the things that we see this appear in are because we see an exploit. Such exploits in a better written file system wouldn't be an issue at all. So the defect is the design more th
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Yes, all of the mail clients you listed give you the option of using the mbox format to store the mail. This is, however, not the only option for any of the ones you listed and hasn't been for more than half a decade.
this defect has NOTHING to do with how the filesystem works
I misspoke. I was talking about the mail filesystem - i.e. the internal mechanism whereby it stores its folders. The fact that NTFS has to be defragmented shows its low quality, but tha
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I'm just slightly shock no one's tagged it "onecarewilleatyoursoul" yet.
Come on, the guys at Microsoft are obviously Aphex Twin [google.com] fans. :D
Re:Stop tagging all MS-related articles defective. (Score:2)
baby, water (Score:2)
Ah! Ah! (Score:2, Insightful)
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OneCare? (Score:3, Funny)
MS 'Once Cared' Email scanning (Score:3, Interesting)
Rename the product (Score:2)
Depends on your AV scanner (Score:2)
The behaviour is "essentially" correct, because pst and mbx's are single files, but the
bigger problem is pst's are binary format, whereas mbx's are text/UUE and text editor
"recovery" is possible.
Newer AV scanners can "snip" out the infected UUE portion, but you have to set the behaviour
yourself as is the case with CAV, and even then it works on IMAP folders, but blasts local ones
on occasion.
(snort)
Thankfully, in my ca
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RAV (Score:2, Informative)
It was a very good antivirus program developed by Gecad, a romanian company. It had support for Linux, BSDs, Solaris and it was highly appreciated in its days. It's so sad that Microsoft killed [infoworld.com] this fine product, removing support for rival platforms and turning it into this lame thing called Onecare.
Bwahahahahahaha!!! (Score:2)
'Nuff said!
Oh, hell, I'll say some more just to piss off the Windows shills!
Microsoft crapware comes through again!
Just when you thought Bill's crew couldn't get ANY dumber than they are, they manage to "shock and awe" again!
Just so the OSS people don't feel left out, this is not QUITE on a par with a recent Thunderbird's ability to delete ALL email by incorrectly marking it as spam to deleted on the next compaction.
That was fixed easily in a few days and the workaround was trivial: do a search and replace
not a problem (Score:2, Funny)
OneCare doesn't ever find virusses anyways - so this is just a theoretical danger
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129521-c,antivi
Quarantine not Delete (Score:3, Informative)
This is being misreported all across the Web even though the linked article in every case makes it clear.
It's a serious flaw certainly and still more bad press for Vista, but this one is not nearly as severe as issues like DRM and Certificate-only drivers in Vista - it doesn't deserve the same level of press.
Interesting conundrum (Score:2)
(yes, that's my reaction to having other people's infected PCs. My PCs have been clean (to the best of my knowledge
It's hard enough getting benign software to cleanly un-install. Malware does not come with uninstallers, and it's designed to be as difficult as possible to ge
OneCare has detected malware! (Score:2, Funny)
Delete entire inbox, Cancel or Allow?
~Cancel~
Delete entire inbox, Cancel or Allow?
~Cancel!~
Delete entire inbox, Cancel or Allow?
~Cancel!~
~Cancel Failed, deleting inbox~
Re: Then the computer said... (Score:2)
Imagine my embarassment when I found out it was merely a bug, and my insurance won't pay for the exorcist or the damage done by the SWAT team.
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Re:So what exactly is the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So what exactly is the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So I totally agree with what you said, but that doesn't matter since the real problem is worse than what you described.
Counter example : AVG free (Score:3, Informative)
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And Microsoft taught people, for years, to click on random URL's in emails and random attachments to get all those "features". So your advice to "modern users" is in fact in diametric opposition to Microsoft's historical policies, and is in fact impossible to meaningfully. It's fr
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Christ, what a bunch of idiots, especially the 'business' folk without a backup regime.