This week in data protection

PayMaxx's further closure of its Web services comes after a Web programmer, Aaron Greenspan, discovered that the company's initial attempt to block malicious access had fixed some flaws but left others unresolved.

While still referring to the data leak as "limited in scope," the online payroll processor closed down its PayView and Instant W2 services, the company said in a statement. The services will remain down until PayMaxx has completed a thorough security analysis and redesigned the site's architecture.

The dispute between PayMaxx and Greenspan, president of Web services start-up Think Computer and a former PayMaxx customer, over the security of the company's Web site continued this week. PayMaxx referred to Greenspan as a "hacker," while the Web programmer maintained that the security problem is far worse than divulged by the payroll company.

Meanwhile, an e-mail security scanning company accidentally deleted thousands of its customers' e-mails. GFI, a Microsoft "gold certified partner," is offering free upgrades to all its customers, after it trashed their e-mails 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 e-mail scanning. When the GFI MailSecurity update mechanism tried to install BitDefender updates on customer networks, the service started to delete all e-mails by default. BitDefender and GFI then rolled back the updates.