Further to yesterday's story that Symantec classified a software utility that enables Chinese surfers to view blocked websites as a Trojan horse, the company has issued a statement reversing its decision.

In a statement first published in The Register, Symantec said: "A number of our customers drew our attention to what they deemed the suspicious nature of the Freegate software. Upon investigation by our researchers, similarities were noted between how the software operated and how various Trojan horses operated, based on the use of open proxies to penetrate firewalls used to block web sites. As a result, it was deemed a cyber threat and blocked by our software. Since that time, further investigation indicates that Freegate is in fact not a Trojan horse and detection for this program has therefore been removed from Symantec's virus definitions."