Trojan, mailer, virus, spy?

Q: Please can you help me with security problems? I am using AVG and Malwarebytes, (both full versions) for my security. When I scanned for infections the two programs found nothing. Then I installed Spybot from your cover disc on to my computer. When I scanned for infections the program found four malware and three potentially unwanted programs. Please can you tell me why my security programs are not finding the infections and Spybot is? Is it worth me spending money if the programs don’t find all the infections?

A: Anti-malware tools seldom agree with each other on what constitutes a threat. It all depends on how you define what malware is. One person’s infection is someone else’s cookie or advertising-supported application. Plus, because developers constantly revise their databases, what is and isn’t defined as a threat can change from day to day and program to program. This inevitably leads to the odd false-positive where a legitimate piece of code is detected as malware. If you want to see how the big antivirus providers perform in different situations pay a visit to www.av-comparatives.org.

Generally speaking if you have an up to date antivirus program together with an anti-spyware tool and you keep Windows updated with the latest patches then you’ll be okay. You need to practise safe surfing by not installing downloads from locations you don’t trust and not opening links or attachments from unsolicited emails. It’s easy to become paranoid about security but there’s really no need. Whatever you do there’s always going to be a slight risk but if you take the above precautions the chances of picking up anything really nasty are minimal.

You can get a second opinion on malware infections by running an online test like Panda ActiveScan

Originally featured in PCU125

Tagged as: detection, false positive, online scan, virus