An email security scanning company has accidentally deleted thousands of its customers’ emails.
GFI, a Microsoft “gold certified partner”, is now offering free upgrades to all its customers after it trashed their emails by sending out incorrect update information.
According to GFI, the problem occurred because of a change in BitDefender’s technology, one of the products that GFI uses for its email scanning. When the GFI MailSecurity update mechanism tried to install BitDefender updates on customer networks, the service started to delete all emails by default. BitDefender and GFI then rolled back the updates.
A BitDefender spokesman said: “We’ve learned our lesson. From now on we’ll try to give more support to our integration partners. The other companies that integrate our scanning engine did not have the same problem.”
Ouch!
Readers with a keen memory may recall that BitDefender also licenses its personal antivirus software to the sleazy iDownload.com, which sells it at an inflated price under the name Virus Hunter. Sounds like the company needs to pay a lot more attention to its partners.
Ed Bott 