Customers of UK ISP Be Broadband were left feeling somewhat despondent over the weekend after a popular piece of anti-virus software, Norton Internet Security, mistakenly identified the providers entire website domain (bethere.co.uk) as being fraudulent or containing dangerous scripts.

The issue affected not just bethere.co.uk but all of its sub-domains too, such as web.bethere.co.uk and customer web server connections. Even visits to email.bethere.co.uk were issued with a warning, which hampered customers while trying to access their email through BE's webmail interface.

However we note that none of these websites have any kind of malicious code installed upon them and the warning is in fact being made in error. According to the BE Usergroup, Norton imposed the notice after an individual customer's server (188-X-141-83.zone11.bethere.co.uk) was hacked and infected with phishing malware (i.e. software designed to steal personal and financial details).

BE are currently working with the customer to clean-up their server and have Norton's warning removed before it causes too many problems. Many ISPs host thousands of customer web-space or server accounts on sub-domains and this only goes to show how damaging it can be to impose a blanket restriction on an entire domain.