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The DonationCoder "Superior Antivirus" Award/Certification
mouser:
From my standpoint, i dont think we should try to make this award tell you everything you know to decide if an antivirus program is for you.. it's not meant to evaluate the # hits and misses, or the cpu load, etc.. I think those are things that are better saved for a detailed review.
What i'm interested in is motivating these companies to stop the deceptive alerting that scares people like the boy who cried wolf, is harmful for developers because of all the false positives, and currently is without incentive to correct.
By providing a meaningful award that focuses on the issues i suggested, i'm hoping that we might be able to get some antivirus companies to take this certification seriously, and see the benefit of having it.
Think of it as an effort to establish a new BARE MINIMUM standard that all good anti-malware programs will need to live up to if they are to be viewed as serious contenders. Initially no product meets these standards, but the first one that does will be able to honestly say, this is a real reason to choose us over the others.
And for our part we can help by promising to review and draw positive attention to any anti-malware that meets this standard.
Stoic Joker:
What i'm interested in is motivating these companies to stop the deceptive alerting that scares people like the boy who cried wolf, is harmful for developers because of all the false positives, and currently is without incentive to correct.-mouser (December 20, 2009, 07:16 PM)
--- End quote ---
Hm... So, you're shooting for kinder gentler heuristics. (or rather...) If the AV companies are forced to (justify) clarify exactly what they're on about and why, they'll start being a bit more careful about flipping (erroneous) messages on the screen (to avoid looking foolish) and much of the other stuff will get ironed out in the resulting ripple effect.
I still think it would be more fun to storm the castle... :-\ ...but your way has a better chance at a lasting (positive) effect. :(
JavaJones:
There's nothing stopping the creation of 2 awards either. The thread started with a good idea which I'd really like to see implemented, but honest advertising is also very worthwhile to encourage. It's not unique to AV soft though. And, as you said, is a much harder battle. ;)
- Oshyan
iphigenie:
What i'm interested in is motivating these companies to stop the deceptive alerting that scares people like the boy who cried wolf, is harmful for developers because of all the false positives, and currently is without incentive to correct.-mouser (December 20, 2009, 07:16 PM)
--- End quote ---
Hm... So, you're shooting for kinder gentler heuristics. (or rather...) If the AV companies are forced to (justify) clarify exactly what they're on about and why, they'll start being a bit more careful about flipping (erroneous) messages on the screen (to avoid looking foolish) and much of the other stuff will get ironed out in the resulting ripple effect.
-Stoic Joker (December 20, 2009, 09:22 PM)
--- End quote ---
It doesnt even need gentler heuristics as much as qualified heuristics - heuristics with a confidence rating perhaps showing simple scales showing a)how active the suspected menace is at the moment, how precise (large) the matched signature is (i.e. could it be a fluke) leading to a rating going from "this is very serious even if you trust the program the file came from be very very paranoid" to "if you know and trust the program in question then you might ignore this warning"
mouser:
Article today about the sad state of antivirus:
http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2010/04/problems-caused-by-anti-virus-software-not-going-away.ars
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