Norton False Alarms (affects both PureBasic and PowerBasic)

[purbas_fan]

I was evaluating Pure Basic as my next development platform and was totally impressed with the product. However, whenever I created an executable, Norton’s resident heuristics program would flag my executables as a virus.

On further investigation, I found that Norton only flagged the programs as a virus when I included in GUI functions in the program. I ran a battery of online virus tests on the executables and found that only one of 50 different AV programs flagged the executables as a virus.

So, I contacted Norton to alert them that they were producing false positives on a perfectly legitimate program. The Norton folks had not gotten back to me in months. So, I went out and purchased Power Basic instead. Lo and behold! Norton’s heuristics flagged Power Basic executables as viruses under the very same circumstances as Pure Basic!

Today, I was contacted by Norton to inform me that they confirmed that the heuristics feature of their resident program was generating false alarms under the circumstances I described. They also told me that they will be fixing this problem in an up-coming release.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

When I worked for the computer 3rd party maintenance company they spent $3900.00+ a year on Norton licenses... I used AVAST (and had a bitchhelldemons own time of uninstalling Norton) We called it MORON ANTIVIRUS... it rarely updated and in fact the systems went down multiple times using it.

Last year I worked there I pursuaded my boss to pop for the AVAST site license... they have NOT had an issue since!

I have never had an issue at all... no matter what I programmed in PB!

Get rid of MORON AV you won't be sorry!

[ricardo]

In my point of view, AV companies do that in purpouse.
They make a living from people living afraid of virus.
So, they really dont care about it, and only (and slowly) correct 'false positives' when people complains... but after some months, another flag will make them trigger a new alert on you executables, you will see.

They are not stupis but unethics.

[PMV]

I was evaluating Pure Basic as my next development platform and was totally impressed with the product. However, whenever I created an executable, Norton’s resident heuristics program would flag my executables as a virus.

On further investigation, I found that Norton only flagged the programs as a virus when I included in GUI functions in the program. I ran a battery of online virus tests on the executables and found that only one of 50 different AV programs flagged the executables as a virus.

So, I contacted Norton to alert them that they were producing false positives on a perfectly legitimate program. The Norton folks had not gotten back to me in months. So, I went out and purchased Power Basic instead. Lo and behold! Norton’s heuristics flagged Power Basic executables as viruses under the very same circumstances as Pure Basic!

Today, I was contacted by Norton to inform me that they confirmed that the heuristics feature of their resident program was generating false alarms under the circumstances I described. They also told me that they will be fixing this problem in an up-coming release.

it is not only norton ... antivir is another software that makes
sometimes a false positiv on PureBasic. Yes, there are posts
where some uses descriped, that antivir reported the installer
of PureBasic as a virus. ... it is a (litte) problem, but it
shouldn't be the point, why you doesn't use it. Heuristics
can report any program programmed with any language.

[swan]

When an AV app is that hard to remove (properly) I would suggest it self is the virus or at the very least mal ware !

[MachineCode]

Virus-scanner #1 rule: Always disable heuristics scanning. Does absolutely nothing but cause trouble.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

ricardo has a valid point!

I would not disable hueristic scanning... that has helped me on a couple of accasions with webpage ads attempting to load malware in my system!