False Alarm

A false alarm occurs when anti-virus software mistakes legitimate items for malicious content. This has been known to cause major problems for the end user. First of all, they are not aware of the false alarm - a user will believe they have detected a genuine security threat. When infections have been falsely identified, users never figure that there may be a glitch in the anti-virus software. False alarms can prove to be expensive, as a user may go to great length to get rid of the supposed infection. Though it often causes unwarranted panic, testing the false alarm patterns in anti-virus software is relatively easy. All it takes to get started is a decent batch of uninfected items. This can be done by gathering a nice collection of free software such as CD ROM demos. A good capacity to aim for is around 650 MB. From there, a user will scan the collection of uninfected items and evaluate the results.