Chinese lawyer to take Symantec to court over XP file deletion

A Chinese lawyer has begun court proceedings against Symantec, alleging that a faulty antivirus update caused his computer to collapse.

According to China View, Liu Shihui, a lawyer with the Hongmian Law Firm in southern Guangdong Province, is seeking 1,644 yuan (£108) to compensate for losses caused when his computer was allegedly paralyzed on the evening of May 18 due to a Norton antivirus automatic update.

China View reports that "the updating of the Chinese version of the Norton software, which started on May 18, wrongly identified two critical files of the Microsoft XP operating system as malicious codes and deleted them, causing millions of Chinese computers to collapse."

A Beijing Symantec customer has also filed a lawsuit seeking 50,000 yuan compensation for data lost from his laptop due to the Norton update.

Just imagine if all of Symantec's 'millions' of affected Chinese customers successfully took the anti-malware company to court. I wonder how big a dent it would make in the giant's coffers, and reputation...