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Author Topic: Anti-Virus that allows EASY reporting of false positives ?  (Read 4259 times)

tomos

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I'm looking for an anti-virus that allows easy reporting of false positives.

I've been using MSE anti-virus for a couple of months now. It's been very quiet until recently when it decided that the source code of GridMove was a Trojan or something.
Those details aren't important - what is important is that I was not given a choice to easily remove this from the "threatened with quarantine" list - I added it to the exclusion list but I had to wait till I rebooted before the tray icon went from red, for danger, to green. I dont see any way of reporting false-positives - maybe the "spynet" option would work but the idea is not mentioned there either...

My previous AV was Avira, the paid version - this has a very good reputation - at the expense of being a bit enthusiastic, i.e. more false-positives. This would be fine if they made it easier to report them, but they dont. I started four threads in their forum on the subject and there was zero interest in changing how things worked - they were happy to take the details per forum post or per PM - but to me that's not the way to go (there were other routes that also worked in a roundabout manner). I want ease of use (not just for me naturally - I want to be able to take advantage of everybody else's easily reported false-positive reports)

There were a few threads a while back about giving the AV industry a hard time - if there were an AV with this "feature", and we would support it for that reason, we would be sending a message to the rest of the posse... or at the least we might have a decent AV :)
Tom

Stoic Joker

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Re: Anti-Virus that allows EASY reporting of false positives ?
« Reply #1 on: May 06, 2011, 05:56 PM »
Man, that's really weird. I've got source code for... (well never mind) and MSE has never triggered on it. However I do recall it having a cow about a (Um...) "Security Utility" that I was playing with and after telling it to ignore target X I had to hit the complete action (/finish clean-up/something to that effect) button to get it to shut up and go green again. It grumbled a bit like it was pretending to do something...Then did what it was told.

MerleOne

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Re: Anti-Virus that allows EASY reporting of false positives ?
« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2011, 04:02 AM »
Avira (free version and maybe payware ones) : there is a special url you go to in case of a false positive and where you can upload the file in question (there is a size limit).
.merle1.

Renegade

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Re: Anti-Virus that allows EASY reporting of false positives ?
« Reply #3 on: May 07, 2011, 05:09 AM »
Wait... You said easy... Let's step back... Are there really programs that let you tell them they are wrong? :P
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Carol Haynes

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Re: Anti-Virus that allows EASY reporting of false positives ?
« Reply #4 on: May 07, 2011, 05:44 AM »
AVAST free AV allows submission of false positives.

Not sure how actively they take notice of those submissions - especially from users of the free version. I'd guess you might get better response from the subscription based version because then they offer support.

Avast is easy to configure files to ignore though.

Renegade

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Re: Anti-Virus that allows EASY reporting of false positives ?
« Reply #5 on: May 07, 2011, 05:52 AM »
It makes sense for AV companies to pay more attention to IT administrators at companies with large numbers of licenses...
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Curt

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Re: Anti-Virus that allows EASY reporting of false positives ?
« Reply #6 on: May 07, 2011, 04:35 PM »
I don't believe any AntiVirus / Malware-Scanner ever will offer the option to "report false positives". The simple reason being the risk of evil software authors abusing the system. Instead I expect the normal procedure must be as it is today: "let us "extra-test" if your file is okay or not".


2011-05-07_232623.gif


Edited:
The couple of times that I have used this service, the response was given later on the same day, and on both occasions Agnitum updated their filter, to acknowledge the file in question.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2011, 04:47 PM by Curt »