Boards Index › General discussion › Technical Q&A › False positives
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4 April, 2008 at 3:18 pm #9790
Well ive become fully aware of what these are, scanners that tell you they have found a virus and they have deleted it to make you think the scanner is worth having.
Ive had these two
Trojan TG/Agent.bux.1 and
W95/bumblebeeAfter a bit of research I have found them both on extensive lists of false positives.
I thought it would be worth starting a thread, so if your computer throws something at you that sounds like a virus its always worth googling the name followed by false positive and see what you get. But dont rely on it, as there may still be something valid that needs dealing with, but these particular ones are generated to cause unnecessary worry.
My problem turned out to be a conflict in my firewall settings that were interupting various scans at exactly the same time and closing down my system andnothing atall to do with the above viruses.
Has anybody else had time wasted over this sort of thing? Im still learning as I go along but I quite like it in a sinister way… wierd I know, but I just enjoy solving problems. Its the ones that cannot be solved that annoy me lol
4 April, 2008 at 6:35 pm #323054Just try Googling “Spyware removal” and you get some 4,200,000 hits.
99.999% of these programmes are rubbish and will return a ‘false positive’ when you first instal and run them. This is to convince you that they are fasntastic and have ‘found’ spyware / malware on your computer that other programmes couldn’t find.
Basically it is a scam to get you to pay for the programme. The worst thing is that the vast majority are utterly useless, but they lull you into a false sense of security by letting you think that you are in some way protected.
4 April, 2008 at 6:39 pm #323055BTW …. you raise an interesting point Sharon.
You should never run a spyware scan at the same time as you run an anti-virus scan (or indeed any other type of scan for that matter) as the scanning engines can and often do conflict with each other.
Best practice is to do your scans (or schedule them to be done) sequentially so that they don’t conflict with each other.
4 April, 2008 at 6:49 pm #323056@forumhostpb wrote:
BTW …. you raise an interesting point Sharon.
You should never run a spyware scan at the same time as you run an anti-virus scan (or indeed any other type of scan for that matter) as the scanning engines can and often do conflict with each other.
Best practice is to do your scans (or schedule them to be done) sequentially so that they don’t conflict with each other.
Why ???4 April, 2008 at 6:52 pm #323057Yes Ive learnt that.
Also online scanners wont work with many firewalls so you have to disable those too.
Sunny, they can crash your system if they run at the same time.
4 April, 2008 at 6:59 pm #323058@sharongooner wrote:
Yes Ive learnt that.
Also online scanners wont work with many firewalls so you have to disable those too.
Sunny, they can crash your system if they run at the same time.
So i dont run me spy wear and me trogon thingy togther and i dont delte no hokey cokeys
Im getting good at this computer stuff 8)
4 April, 2008 at 7:11 pm #323059Just the scans sunny, you can leave them running as protection but when it somes to actually scanning you only run one at a time.
And leave the ohky cokeys alone :lol: that always makes me laugh… we didnt see you for weeks!
4 April, 2008 at 8:10 pm #323060Sunny …. anti-spyware and anti-virus programmes ”scan” all the files on your computer using what is called a scanning engine. This compares every file it looks at with its own database of ”known” viruses or spies etc.
What can happen is that the scanning engine of one application could ”look” at the same file (or group of files) as the scanning engine of another application – both at the same time.
In essence this creates a conflict between the two (or more) of them ansd often results in both freezing up or crashing your computer completely.
Additionally, a lot of firewalls are sensitive to this scanning activity, as they interpret it as an attack on the computer, so they automatically conflict with the scanner’s activity and block it.
You should also know that as viruses, trojans, and the like are proliferating almost hourly, it is absolutely no use updating your anti-virus programmes with new ‘definitions’ weekly or longer. Ideally they should be updated daily (or even hourly).
4 April, 2008 at 8:39 pm #323061:shock: :shock: Dirty lil f00ker prothingying on my computer every couple of hours
[-( I aint having that :evil:
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