Are AV False Positives Hurting You?

Gerald asks: "After the most recent Wireshark release a certain AV vendor's product started warning users that the installer contained adware. Since then, I've spent several hours verifying this isn't the case, trying to get the AV vendor to fix their stuff, and reassuring affected users that we do not ship adware with our product. Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated case. I've had to do this several times over the past few years, and each incident uses up time that could have been better spent elsewhere. It's even worse for other projects. If you produce software, have you ever suffered collateral damage from AV false positives?"

Comments

Re:Yes, with Avira AntiVir

[RichMan]

> old DOS

Watch that old DOS. It will continue to grow, hogging more and more resources eventually slowing even the fastest systems. Reducing productivity and requiring lots of manual fixes. The old versions required user activity to update but the latest versions call home and self update. For the last 10 years or so they have been calling home with user info and restricting what you can do with the machine. Many crashes, data loss and other failures can be directly attributed to this virulent strain.

Security Threat high.
Outbreak in progress.
Latest version seen: Vista, many variants