Are Anti Virus programs and Java Script stopping your website traffic ?

At times some anti virus software gives false positive alerts for safe sites.
Some support forum topic headlines I have found around the web.

FALSE POSITIVE VBS:Malware-gen warning for confirmed safe URL. I am getting a virus alert when going into yahoo.com Infection is "HTML:Iframe-inf" and connection aborted. I know the website is malware free!

False Alert or False positives can be more than just annoying. A false positive can cause good necessary files to be deleted, causing a PC operating system or program to stop functioning. It can also block a website or blacklist it. In one case a legitimate consumer advice web site helping people save money was classified as a phishing site.

The phishing site false positive was removed in the next anti virus update, however I have to wonder how many users were scared away from a good website ? Antivirus companies also can and do, cause big problems for small software developers but that is another article altogether.

If you have or are planning to build a web site or sites what can you do about this problem of false reporting. The best approach, as we have said on this site, regarding web design, keep it simple. The code that these programs find and wrongly identify as a threat are not basic html tags. They are scripts or files that use code other then HTML. It is tempting to have a fancy state of the art web site. Remember though that the fancy state of the art problems come right along with that beautiful technical web site.

Aside from the anti virus troubles that could crop up, there are more and more surfers that disable Java and other software add-ons. In fact you will never find a security expert surfing the web with java enabled. Of course most users are not that, however they do tire of infections and disable the functions unless they are on their favorite game site. Or start to avoid all sites that they do not already know as safe.

M. Geller
Webmaster - Owner
Fun with your PC