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False Positive on Software (Generic.Dx) by McAfee Today: McAfee Response and Fix

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drpeterharris:
This has hit me big-time!

Last Wednesday,  while on holiday,  I started getting notifications that McAfee had been deleting my applications (3 of them) and I had very unhappy customers.   

OK - McAfee have released a new DAT file that has "fixed" the problem but not the damage that has been done.  I supply software to the rather sensitive healthcare industry and although I immediately released a statement explaining what had happened, I dread to think what this has done to my reputation (no smoke without fire etc).  This is compounded by the fact that we have just launched a marketing campaign aimed at a new group of potential customers.

On top of this is the support load of getting all our customers back up and running again.

The whole episode has made me absolutely livid and has spoilt what should have been a relaxing skiing holiday.

Has anyone ever succeeded in getting any form of legal compensation in these circumstances?  I am sure that the McAfee EULA is watertight in respect of their responsibility to their end users but the way this has affected me and the implication that my software is a Trojan seems much like defamation.

Any lawyers out there?

Peter

mouser:
Hi Peter,

Welcome to the site, and welcome to the club of coders who are having their reputations damaged by this outrageous behavior.

This episode was particularly grevious because not only did it tell people that there was this virus but then automatically deleted files without warning or question.  Can you imagine if the program was actually performing some critical function? Not cool.

The only think I know to do is try to get information out there to the users so that the blame and anger is properly focused on these antivirus companies and not us!

-mouser

f0dder:
Christ, antivirus apps deleting what it thinks are viruses? How lame is that... at least the default action should be "block access" or "quarantine", not frigging delete. Seems like the guys are smoking too many bad floppies, and spend too little time on creating signatures when they find a new piece of malware >_<

mouser:
well delete = quarantine.  it auto deletes the file but keeps a copy in its quarantine safe that you can restore (but only after the virus update declares it clean a few days after the original detection).

but the main thing that needs to change is:
1. the antivirus programs have to be honest about how confident the program is that it has found something dangerous
2. it has to give the user useful info and allow them to decide what to do.

drpeterharris:
The problem is that many of my customers have managed AV solutions and they have no options for restoring files or modifying the behaviour of the scanner themselves.

Peter

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