Test: Virus Still Gives Many False Alarms

It is still common for virus scanners and security software wrongly clean consider software as malware, sometimes causing millions of users can get duped and even important files can lose. According to a test of the Austrian test lab AV-Comparatives.


According to the test lab, it is important to not only to measure the detection of malware in the testing of anti-virus software, but also the reliability. A part of the trustworthiness is dealing with clean files, and it does not give false alarms, the so-called 'false positives'. "False positives are an important yardstick for the quality of anti-virus software. A false positive notification from a customer can provide a lot of work and support to remedy the problem. Sometimes it can even lead to data loss and system inaccessible," said the test lab.

During the test from AV-Comparatives gave ESET, Microsoft Security Essentials and Panda Security no false alarms.Kaspersky Lab, Lavasoft, Tencent, Bitdefender, Emsisoft, Trend Micro, BullGuard, eScan, Avira, AVG, McAfee and Sophos was fewer than nine times the error. Fortinet, Quick Heal, F-Secure and Threat Track saw 12 to 18 clean files for malware. Avast and Baidu exciting with respectively 35 and 139 false alarms crown.

The impact varies by product. Fortinet regarded as Adobe Acrobat as malware, and Threat Track this occurs when the Symantec software. Avast see the Trend Micro software again for malware and multiple virus scanners to choke on a game.