By Ranjan Bhaduri

Dec.04, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The onslaught of online threats like virus and Trojan horses have prompted the majority of computer users to install system security suite and anti malware software in their systems. The corporate entities buy paid version of security software, while the students and users with tight budgets go for free anti-virus programs. Avast, based in Czech Republic, is known for its free antivirus program that is used by millions of Windows users worldwide. The free Avast antivirus is known for its efficiency in malware detection and removal.

However, sometimes antivirus software can falter in their job and report false warnings. Precisely, this is what happened with Avast antivirus recently. After downloading a software update from the Avast site, many of its users found that the antivirus started reporting genuine programs as malicious and harmful objects. This created confusion among a lot of users. Avast took note of the situation and came up with a solution within a few hours. Among the programs that were falsely detected as Trojan and viruses, the applications like media players and Adobe suites deserve a mention.

However, this is not the first time that an antivirus reported false positives. Earlier the companies like AVG and Computer Associates suffered from the same problem. The users who were not online for that period or did not download the rogue updates manually did not have to face the problem at all. While Avast was able to solve the problem quickly, it refused to issue any comment on what had actually caused the problem.